Tag Archives: jack gaughan

Magazine/Anthology, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[May 22, 1970] Back From The Dead (Summer 1970 Worlds of Tomorrow)

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black and white photo of a dark-haired white woman with vampiric eyebrows
by Victoria Silverwolf

Resurrection

Well, what do you know.  A magazine I thought as dead as a doornail has risen from its grave.  I've reviewed every issue of Worlds of Tomorrow from its birth in 1963 to its demise in 1967.  After three years of mouldering in the grave, like John Brown's body, it has returned.  Let's take a look at this revenant to see if it was worth digging up. 

The cover of Worlds of Tomorrow science fiction magazine. The title is written across the top in yellow capitals, with the word tomorrow surrounded by a black oval and the letters drop shadowed.  In the lower left corner some contents are listed: The Bridge, by Piers Anthony; In the Land of Love by George H Smith; Of Death What Dreams, by Keith Laumer; The State Vs Susan Quod, by Noel Loomis.  The cover art is a painting of a naked white woman emerging through a wispy white opening in a red background. The left side of her body as well as her right arm and lower leg are still submerged in the background, making it seem that she is emerging breast- and hip-first.  The silhouette of her submerged right hand is visible in shadow as it reaches up toward her face.  She is looking forward and down with a neutral expression.
Cover art by Jack Gaughan.

The first thing to note is that the magazine is all fiction.  No editorial, no articles, no letter column, no reviews.  Oh, there's a one page thing by new editor Ejler Jakobsson, but it only discusses the stories briefly, in pretty much the same way most magazines provide a short blurb before each piece.

The next thing that catches my eye is that there's a heck of a lot of art, and that it's not credited.  I had to do some detective work (visible signatures, stylistic clues, etc.) to name the artists, but I was not always successful, as you'll see below.  I could take some educated guesses (I suspect that the names Gilbert and Gaughan would appear more often if I did) but I've tried not to go too far out on a limb.  At least we know who the authors are!

In the Land of Love, by George H. Smith

Title art for In the Land of Love, a black and white ink drawing spread across two pages.  The title is at the top, crossing both pages in a wavy psychedelic font.  On the left page, a cluster of people are tightly grouped together, such that for most only the heads are showing, mostly looking down or at one another.  At the top of the cluster, a woman with wind blown hair and uncovered chest is gazing at the viewer.  On the right page, a pregnant woman with unkempt hair and apparently wearing only a necklace and loincloth sits on the ground with her legs stretched in front of her and her right hand resting on her belly.  Next to her, an old man with a long handlebar mustache is crouching on his heels and looking cranky.
Illustrations by Gilbert(full name unknown.)

In a vastly overpopulated future world dominated by India, folks in North America are crowded together in small rooms and survive on gruel.  Our protagonist, an ex-soldier well over a century old, hates living like that.  What really gets his goat is the fact that society has become a right-winger's nightmare of what might happen when the hippies take over.

Everybody is stoned all the time.  They constantly talk about love, but consider political assassins to be heroes.  They also approve of the fact that a motorcycle thug casually runs over people, killing adults and children on a whim.  They consider it to be karma.

A pen and ink drawing of Super-Zapper standing in front of his motorcycle.  He is a white man with long straight unkempt hair and an untrimmed mustache.  He is wearing only a leather vest with a death's head decoration, and a loincloth with a leather belt.  His feet are bare.  In his right hand he holds a motorcycle helmet with a string of stick figures drawn on it, and in his left he appears to be holding a cigarette.  He is facing to the left of the viewer with a smug expression.
Super-Zapper, the killer cyclist.

The old veteran yearns for death to release him, but not even that is a sure way to escape from this hippie hell.  However, maybe there's a way he can use this to his advantage.

Boy, George H. Smith (not to be confused with SF writer George O. Smith) sure hates hippies!  This is very heavy-handed satire indeed.  The twist at the end is mildly interesting, but that's all I can say about it.

Two stars.

Of Death What Dreams, by Keith Laumer

A pen and ink drawing , mostly taken up by bold lines and curves criss crossing the page.  They leave a space at the center right for the head and upper body of a man with curly dark hair and a striped shirt with a sigil on the left breast showing eight small circles surrounding a larger circle.  He is looking down and reaching forward toward the lines with his right hand.
Uncredited illustration.

This requires some explanation.  Fortunately, the Noble Editor has saved me some work, in his review of March issue of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction.  I shamelessly steal his quotation from editor Ed Ferman:

Five of science fiction's best storytellers were asked to write a novella beginning from a common prologue (written by Keith Laumer), to be combined in a book called Five Fates.  The Anderson story and one by Frank Herbert (coming up soon) will be published in F&SF.  We suggest that you look for the book (out in August from Doubleday) in order to catch up with the others: by Keith Laumer, Gordon Dickson and Harlan Ellison.

The Poul Anderson story The Fatal Fulfillment appeared in that issue, where it won a middle-of-the-road three stars.

The Noble Editor has already reviewed the March issue of Galaxy, which featured Ellison's story The Region Between.  That one earned a full five stars.

Let's see if Laumer's version gets an A, a C, or some other grade.

A black and white drawing.  Three wheels with four spokes each seem to be rolling across the page over a person's head which is drawn in a very abstract linear style.  Long wires extend upward from the head out of the frame.
Illustration by Jack Gaughan.

Like all the other stories, this one begins with a guy named Douglas Bailey entering a euthanasia center and getting an injection that is supposed to kill him.  In this case, however, he revives in a room with a woman who seems vaguely familiar present.  Because he lost all his legal identity at the time of his attempted suicide, he has to join the criminal underground to survive.  He also feels as if he's got some purpose he has to fulfill.

This is a rigidly hierarchical, vastly overcrowded future world.  Bailey manages to put together enough cash to get himself a false ID as a member of the upper class, implant knowledge of the culture of the elite into his brain, and develop his body into that of a bodybuilder in a particularly painful way.  He bluffs his way into the ruling class (who are literally high above the ordinary folks) for reasons that don't become clear until the end.

An ink painting of a woman, her body outlined using negative-space techniques.  She has long wavy dark hair, heavily lined eyes, and is wearing a skimpy bikini.  She is posing like a model, with her right hand atop her head as if brushing her hair back and her left hand on her hip, her body turned toward the left but her head toward the right.  She is standing in front of a stylized doorway decorated with swirls and geometric shapes reminiscent of art deco.
Illustration by Phoebe Gaughan, who is married to Jack.

Given that this is a yarn by Laumer, it's not surprising that it's got plenty of action, a complex plot, and moves at lightning speed.  This is an example of the author in his serious mood, rather than his frequent attempts at comedy.  The climax adds a couple of science fiction themes that aren't clued at earlier, so that strains credibility.  Overall, worth a read, but no masterpiece.

Three stars.

The Bridge, by Piers Anthony

Title image for The Bridge.  The title is written in a swirly bold font with THE at the top of the page and Bridge at the bottom.  In the center is a line drawing of a naked woman sitting with her back to the viewer, leaning back to rest on her left hand.  Her hair is blowing in the wind past her feet, and she has turned her upper body so that her profile is visible.  She is looking at the viewer with a skeptical expression.
Illustration by Gilbert.

A guy wakes up to find a tiny woman in his bed.  She insists that they make love.  Alternating sections of the text reveal who sent her to him and why.

A pen and ink drawing of a small naked woman at the top of the page. The folds of a huge blanket extend from her navel down to the bottom of the page.
Illustration by Jack Gaughan.

Really, this is nothing but a description of a man of normal size having sex with a woman nine inches tall.  It's pretty explicit.  The explanation for what's going on is confusing and nonsensical.  The whole thing boils down to an extended dirty joke.

A printed diagram shows a thin rectangle on the left, labeled XMTR above and INPUT below. It is connected by two zigzags to a square just left of center, labeled RCVR above and STAGE I, docking & transfer below.  This is connected by multiple smaller zigzags to a much smaller square just right of center which is labeled RCVR above.  This connects by two diagonal lines to the top and bottom of a column of even smaller squares, which are labeled SMTRS above and STAGE II, filtering & subdivision below.  Each of the squares in the column is connected via a wavy line to an identical square at the right of the page, labeled RCVRS above and OUTPUT below.
An explanatory diagram that explains nothing.

One star.

Serum-SOB, by James Bassett

A black and white illustration shows a large white syringe against a black background.  The handle of the plunger is a peace sign.  On the body of the syringe is drawn an exaggerated graffiti style cartoon of a woman wearing only underpants, with her hands held up next to her shoulders with fingers splayed. She is smiling widely.
Illustrations uncredited.

A scientist discovers that human aggression is caused by a virus.  He develops a vaccine that turns people into passive, agreeable folks.  His main motive is to have sex with other women without his wife being upset.  Once the whole world is inoculated, he finds another way to amuse himself, with serious consequences. 

A cartoon drawing of a balding old man's face, smiling beatifically with eyes squinted closed, against an abstract black textured background.
The effect of Serum-SOB.

The intent seems to be comic satire.  I don't think it works.  I guess I'm supposed to be amused by the scientist's cynical manipulation of other people.  Nope.

One star.

Tell Me, by Edward Y. Breese

A pen and ink cross hatch drawing of a man with dark hair in a space suit against a shadowy background.  He is staring blankly at the viewer through his transparent helmet.
More uncredited artwork.

A space scout talks about his experience on a world populated by very human aliens at a fairly low level of technology.  You'll probably be able to figure out who he is pretty quickly.

This thing depends entirely on its plot twist, which is telegraphed in multiple ways early in the text.  It's not a terribly original idea, either.  Maybe not quite as worthless as the two previous stories, but not good.

Two stars.

The State vs. Susan Quod, by Noel Loomis

A charcoal drawing on graph paper of a naked woman from head to pubic area (which is not drawn). The arms end in scribbles at the elbows.  Numbers and illegible writing surround the figure, with lines extending toward parts of the body and face as if to indicate measurements or reference points.
Even more uncredited artwork.

The narrator tells us about his wife, who was a robot nearly indistinguishable from a human being.  He didn't know this until the end of their relationship, but he tells the reader right away.

There are lots of these androids around, and they appear to be infiltrating positions of power.  Somehow they've overcome the restrictions built into them.

The plot has something to do with the robot's grandfather taking control of the world's supply of gold, leading to economic chaos.  The narrator is a political operative who is supposed to correct this.  This leads to serious conflict with his wife, and a dramatic gesture on her part that reveals her true nature. 

There's a lot of stuff about the narrator's desire for the stunningly beautiful robot and her refusal to have sex with him until they're married.  This isn't particularly interesting, and the story is way too long.

Two stars.

Histoport 3939, by Mark Power

A black and white pen and ink drawing of a man in a space suit with a transparent face plate. Tubes run from the side of the helmet down the back of the suit.  He is looking down at several sheets of paper he is holding in the glove of the suit.
Illustrations by Jack Gaughan.

A guy joins folks mining a planet for rocks that produce a gas that causes antigravity.  The place is inhabited by asexual aliens who don't seem to have any interest in the humans at all.  Some of the miners, who must be pretty damn lonely, take the aliens as mates.

The guy tries to figure out a way to smuggle the gas, in some other form, out of the planet.  It turns out the aliens eat the rock, and that suggests a way he can succeed.  That involves marrying one of the aliens.  Let's just say that things don't work out well.

A black and white pen and ink drawing of a man in a bulky space suit and an alien, facing each other.  The man's face looks angry.  The alien is facing away from the viewer and appears to have spiky protrusions extending in all directions from its head.  The body is not clearly drawn but appears to have round bumps sticking out of it intermittently.
A man and his mate.

Besides having an implausible plot (Antigravity gas?  Humans taking spore-based, nonsexual aliens as mates?) this story is full of made-up futuristic words in almost every sentence.  A little of that goes a long way.  A centerfold of one of the aliens makes me suspect that I'm not supposed to take this seriously, but the story isn't funny.

A black and white drawing of an alien, drawn centerfold-style across two pages such that you have to turn the magazine sideways to view.  The top page shows a globelike head and a large mushroom-like upper body and a long skinny arm, all of which have spiky protrusions emanating at various angles.  The bottom page shows the other arm, as well as two bulbous legs ending in skinny, rootlike feet.  The pose is reminiscent of a Playboy model.
Eat your heart out, Playboy!

Two stars.

The Mallinson Case, by K. H. Hartley

A black and white drawing shows a lipstick print surrounded by several multi-pronged tv antennae, against a blank background.
Yet another uncredited bit of art.

This takes the form of the transcription of a legal case.  In the future, a person can put his or her consciousness into an artificial body that can be transmitted over something like three-dimensional television.  A man used this to have an affair with a woman.  Her husband sued for adultery, but the court decided the woman was not guilty, because she didn't have sex with the man's actual body.

A black and white cross hatch drawing of a man with a beard, standing three quarters in shadow, such that only his left profile, shoulder, and arm are visible against the dark background.
Illustration by Jack Gaughan.

In the present case, the husband used the same technology to kill the man.  Is he guilty of murder?  Or is he innocent, just as the woman was acquitted of adultery?

The speculative technology is interesting, and the two legal cases are decided in a way that is logical.  Besides that, the story makes for dry reading.  I suppose that's realistic, anyway, but it's pretty dull.

Two stars.

Private Phone, by Rachel Cosgrove Payes

A black and white charcoal drawing of a teenage girl lying on her back with her head toward the viewer.  Her knees are bent and her head is at an angle as though she were lying on her bed with her head off the edge.  She is holding her right hand to her ear as though talking on the telephone.
Yep; more uncredited illustrations.

A teenager wants — you guessed it — a private phone.  Mom argues against it, but Dad gives in.

A black and white illustration of a young girl facing toward the left of the viewer with a neutral expression.  Her hair and the shadows of her face and neck are a circuit diagram.
Typical teenager of the future.

The ending reveals why this story, despite its futuristic trappings, is science fiction at all.  You'll probably see it coming a mile away.

Two stars.

Worth Reviving?

Let's face it; this was a lousy issue.  Only Laumer's story even reaches the level of being worth reading.  There's a lot of sex in this mag, mostly in forms that seem like male fantasies to me. 

An ad in the magazine reveals that another old publication, that hasn't been seen since 1968 (in its first and, so far, only issue) is supposed to rise out of its coffin in the near future.  It looks like it will contain Gordon R. Dickson's contribution to the Five Fates series noted above.  My esteemed colleague Kris Vyas-Myall gave the premiere issue of Worlds of Fantasy a lukewarm review, which isn't promising.

While I long for the return of SF's heyday in the early 1950s, when there were 40 monthly/quarterly mags on the newsstands, I don't think this is the way to get there!

The endpaper of the magazine, which reads: Worlds of fantasy.  Featured in the current issue: Teddy Bear, by James E. Gunn; Walker Between the Planes, by Gordon R. Dickson; Last Night and Every Night, by James Tiptree, Jr. Watch for it on your newsstand!
My sources in the publishing industry tell me that Dickson's story will be retitled Maverick when it appears in book form.  No relation to the old Western TV show, I presume.


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Magazine/Anthology, Science Fiction/Fantasy, Serial

[May 16, 1970) The Tocsin and The Believing Child (June 1970 Fantasy and Science Fiction)

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photo of a man with glasses and curly, long, brown hair, and a beard and mustache
by Gideon Marcus

Rime of the Recent Mariner

I always cast about the news for tidbits to head my articles.  After all, when people read my writings, say, a half-century hence, I want them to be appreciated in the context in which they were created.  Creations, and critique of those creations, cannot stand in isolation (or so I believe).

But, wow, how many times can I talk about the latest protest/riot (six killed in Atlanta last week), or Cambodia (Admiral Moorer recently assured us that the reason we can't destroy the mobile NVA base is…because it's mobile; but we did liberate 387 tons of ammunition, 125 tons of prophylactics, and 83 tons of Communist finger puppets so the Search & Destroy mission was absolutely a success), or the Warm War going on in the Middle East (2 Egyptian Mig-21s shot down the other day, 2 Syrian Mig-17s the day before, but the Israelis absolutely did not lose an F-4 over Lebanon) before it all sounds the same?  Even Governor Reagan's latest escapades into cost effectiveness and court stacking are old hat.

Photograph of a middle-aged white man in a military uniform.
This iteration of Bull Wright instills less confidence than Dan Rowan's…

To heck with it.  Today, I'm going to stick with news in my bailiwick, and nifty news to boot.

You folks surely remember Mariners 6 and 7, twin probes sent past Mars last year, returning unprecedented information and photos from The Red Planet.  Well, even now, both probes are contributing to science, long past their original mission.

JPL astronomer Dr. John D. Anderson and Cal Tech astronomer Dr. Duane O. Muhleman are using the two spacecraft to test the validity of Einstein's theory of relativity.  Per Einstein, the velocity of light slows in the presence of a gravitational field.  If that's the case, then the signals from the Mariners, as they pass the Sun, should decrease—slightly, but measurably. 

To measure this, the two scientists had to wait until Mariner 6 and Mariner 7 passed behind the Sun with respect to the Earth.  For the former, this happened on April 30; for the latter, May 10.  The precise distance-measuring system the two scientisits built in the Mohave Desert should register a slow-up of 200 millionths of a second in the spacecrafts' round trip signal.

This confirmation, should it be reported, will help put paid efforts by other scientists who say that Einstein's theories are wrong or inaccurate, by as much as 7% according to Princeton's Dr. Robert H. Dicke, who needs that to be the case for his theory of Mercury's curious orbital eccentricities.

Black-and-white photograph of a house-sized parabolic antenna. Text below the image says: The Mars Station of the Deep Space Network, with two-hundred-and-ten-foot reflector, high-power transmitter, and quick-change tri-cone feed, tracks Mariner six and Mariner seven through superior conjunction, beyond the Sun, at ranges up to two hundred and forty million miles.

In other Mariner news, New Mexico State Univ. astronomer and Mariner project scientist Bradford A. Smith has some neato news about Phobos, the larger of Mars' moons.  Mariner 7 snapped a picture of the little rock at a distance of 86,000 miles.  JPL photo-enhancement techniques indicated that Phobos was nonspherical and was larger and had a darker surface than previously thought.  It's just 11.2 by 13.7 miles in dimension, elongated along the orbital plane.  Its average visual geometric albedo is just 0.065, lower than that known for any other body in the solar system.

With its weird shape and composition, all signs point to Phobos not being a sister or daughter of its parent planet, but rather, probably a captured asteroid.

Very blurry black-and-white photograph of the Martian moon Phobos, visible only as a tiny smudge of irregular shape against a gray background.

The issue at hand

In a happy, elevated mood, now let us turn to the latest issue of Fantasy and Science Fiction—after all, it doesn't do to review stories on an empty soul.

Cover of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction for June 1970, announcing stories by Isaac Asimov, Ron Goulart, D. F. Jones, Harry Harrison, and Zenna Henderson. The illustration shows a man in a diving suit near a rift in the ocean floor.
cover by Jack Gaughan illustrating

The Tocsin, by D. F. Jones

Wrecks are disappearing from beneath the waves.  No, not disappearing—they're being moved by some force under the sea.  Moreover, such events are happening near the shore in close proximity to big broadcast dishes, the kind whose signals are detectable from far away in space. 

Two officers, one British, one American suspect an extraterrestrial cause, and they put together twin task forces to identify the source of these shifts.

D. F. Jones, author of Collossus, must write screenplays in his spare time because there is an immediate, cinematic quality to his work that makes each scene particularly vivid.  There is also the matter-of-fact, Andromeda Strain-esque "this could really be happening" quality that I appreciate.  New Wave it isn't!

The story reads as incomplete, and I have the nagging feeling that it is connected related to another story, of an alien ship that lands off of the Cornish peninsula known as "the Lizard".  Nevertheless, it's taut and riveting.

Four stars.

Drawing of a huge monstrous creature resembling a pig with bear claws, A small dog is approaching timidly from the side, while a man with a mischievous smile walks away in the background. Text below the image says: That's alright, boy! Here, boy! Forget it, boy! C'mon, boy!
by Gahan Wilson

Wife to the Lord, by Harry Harrison

Harry seems to leave the pseudonym "Hank Dempsey" for matter transmitter stories that appear in Analog.  His latest one, a bit more tongue in cheek than the others, takes place in what seems to be an intermediate period of intergalactic expansion.

Rocket-deposited teleporters have opened up the stars, and Wife involves a particular hard-luck world whose only export is beautiful brides.  Osie has been trained from birth to be the perfect wife and shielded from the actinic rays of her planet's blue-white sun to preserve her fair skin.  The right to wed her is purchased by Jochann, Lord of Maabarot, who is worshipped not as kin to God or a God, but the God.  This makes Osie God's consort.

Most of the story's pages are devoted to showing how the masses of Maabarot live (most peaceably) under the benevolent dictatorship, but when Osie gives (planned) immaculate conception to the Lord's only begotten son, well, it's a bit more than either of its parents bargained for.

Pleasant enough, though it doesn't really go anywhere.  The name of the planet is interesting, as Maabarot refer to the refugee camps set up in the 1950s for Jewish refugees who fled from Arab states to Israel.  Other than the connection to the Holy Land, I can't see how it thematically figures.

Three stars.

Promotional page from a magazine. On a black background, white letters show a quote from Samuel Delany that says: S F has not been looked at so significantly since Kingsley Amis's New Maps of Hell. Text further below says: Lois and Stephen Rose probe the crisis of our time by examining science fiction's approaches to it. Among the S F writers they evaluate are Asimov, Clarke, Heinlein, Sturgeon, Wells, Lewis, Ballard, and Zelazny. Then there is the title: The Shattered Ring, Science Fiction and the Quest for Meaning, for three dollars and fifty cents at your favorite bookstore. A small drawing shows a floating astronaut surrounded by a dog, a star, and the moon. The last portion of text shows the name John Knox and a P.O. box address in Virginia.

Books (F&SF, June 1970), by Sidney Coleman

Banner illustration with the word Books and a drawing of books on a shelf. The bookends on the shelf are a miniature launchpad and an outer space landscape.

Sidney Coleman, a physicist from Harvard, praises Alexei Panshin's Masque World as a very funny book in which little happens, and that's O.K.  I think he likes it more than Jason did. 

He goes on to talk about Robert Silverberg, in the midst of his second career.  In his first, he was "The Compleat Hack", selling "to John Campbell of Astounding an endless skein of stories that managed, with admirable accuracy, to push every one of Campbell's many buttons, and also managed with admirable economy, to have no other detectable qualities whatsoever."

The new Silverberg, freed from fiscal needs thanks to the success of his first career, can write whatever he wants.  And what he writes, among other things, is "a series of stories all concerned in some way with the misuses of sex."

Coleman likes the new Silverberg, and he kind of likes his newish book, To Live Again, though he notes "the old Silverberg sometimes rises to the surface screaming cliches while the new Silverberg's attention is wandering."

Finally, Coleman describes the plot of Laumer's The Long Twilight in detail, hoping that said description will show it up for the ludicrous crap that Coleman thinks it is.  "The title…does not seem to have much connection with the story. I like to think that it refers to the present age in science fiction, when there are many people who like the sort of stuff Keith Laumer writes, and think he writes it very well."

Well.

The Angry Mountain, by Stephen Tall

Stephen Tall writes of a young Pithecanthropus Erectus man, intelligent before his time, making the first tentative efforts to tame and control naturally started fires.  It's a rather fanciful imagination, and if it's SFnal, it is only in that it presumably draws on current understandings of biology and physical anthropology.  Still, if you dug the opening act to 2001, you'll probably dig this.

Three stars.

Mother of Pearl, by Bruce McAllister

In the far future, perhaps the year 2525 (or later), robots and computers have taken responsibility for meeting all of humanity's needs and whims.  Pearl follows a pampered young married pair, who are suddenly abducted and their souls withdrawn and placed in the bodies of animals.  They do not take control of their hosts, instead slowly but inexorably becoming encysted, turned into senseless soul pearls.  Is the robots' intent sinister, kindly, or ineffable?

Like all of Bruce's stories, this one starts promisingly, but the payoff is too maudlin and self-important to be truly effective.  Three stars.

Hobo Jungle, by Ron Goulart

Yet another story of Ben Jolson, shapeshifting agent for the Chameleon Corps, this time sent into the intersterllar equivalent of a 30s-era Hobo encampment in search of a million bucks in a stolen briefcase.  Jolson takes on the form of Tunky Nesper, an itinerant folk singer (clearly a Woody Guthrie analog) and has a set of adventures that could easily have taken place a few decades ago as several centuries from now.

Billed as "very funny", it's not.  I suppose it's trading on the nostalgia of the more irresistibly middle aged of us readers who grew up in The Depression, but if it's trying for something deeper, I missed it.

Two stars.

The Distance of Far, by Isaac Asimov

Banner illustration with the word Science and little drawings of an atom, some cells, mathematical graphs, a spaceship, and a galaxy.

Last time, the Good Doctor told us about the Doppler Effect and how it applies to star spectra.  In this one, Dr. A. explains how measuring the spectra of distant galaxies led to the startling discovery that the farther away the object, the faster it is receding, and how, in turn, that means that the entire universe is expanding.

Not as tightly written as the last piece, the ramifications are still boggling.

Four stars.

The Believing Child, by Zenna Henderson

Zenna Henderson is a master at writing heart-warming, fantastic stories, usually involving teachers and gifted children. Lately, she's been branching out into heart-curdling, fantastic stories, usually involving teachers and gifted children.

Such is this one, involving the little girl named Dismey, who believes so fervently that she can make things so—including things that give her tremendous power like a nigh unprounceable word that transmutes objects.

Nicely done, if a little retrogressive in style and content.  More early '50s F&SF than early '70s, and I prefer comfort to horror.  You may feel differently.

Four stars.

Doing the math

I hope you have enjoyed sharing this little sanctuary amidst all of this year's chaos.  Sometimes all it takes to renew one's strength to continue the struggle is a little good science and a little good science fiction.  Thankfully, this week we got them both.

May we be so lucky next week.

Back cover of a magazine. The text on it says: People with imagination read The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. F and S F's readers are both young, eighty-four percent under forty-five, and educated, sixty-two percent have attended college. When they want relaxation or stimulation in reading, they turn to the best works of imagination and to fantasy and science fiction. The text then gives a quote from Clifton Fadiman that says: F and S F regularly supplies the finest the field has to offer in the way of short fiction. The text goes on to add: Compelling fiction, along with informative and stimulating features on books by Judith Merrill and science by Isaac Asimov, have earned F and S F its reputation as tops in the field. Further down the page, larger text says: And writers with imagination regularly appear in F and S F. The bottom of the page shows a black-and-white photograph of a bald white man with eyeglasses and a moustache, accompanied by this text: Photo by Brian Aldiss. Harry Harrison is a New Yorker by upbringing, lived ten years abroad in Mexico, Spain, Italy, Denmark and England, and is now living in California. His recent novels include Make Room Make Room, The Stainless Steel Rat, and The Daleth Effect. He is also an editor and anthologist, most recently of The Year Two Thousand and Nova One. His latest short story, Wife to the Lord, begins on page thirty-nine.

[New to the Journey? Read this for a brief introduction!]


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Magazine/Anthology, Science Fiction/Fantasy, Serial

[May 8, 1970] Tower of Glass (June 1970 Galaxy)

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Be sure to tune in tonight at 7PM Pacific for a terrific Science Fiction Theater!

a panel showing the words IN COLOR, with each letter in a different color.

photo of a man with glasses and curly, long, brown hair, and a beard and mustache
by Gideon Marcus

It shouldn't happen here (or anywhere)

It was a scene out of Saigon or Prague.  It shouldn't be happening in Middle America.  On May 4, Ohio National Guardsmen, shot four Kent State students dead, wounding ten more.  Here's what we know:

On April 30, President Nixon announced that U.S. troops had entered Cambodia, expanding the war in Southeast Asia.  This sparked mass May Day protests across the country.  After the Kent State ROTC building was burned down over the weekend, Kent Mayor LeRoy Satrom asked Ohio Governor James A. Rhodes to dispatch the National Guard to the campus.

Clashes between students and law enforcement escalated, with several students reportedly being stabbed by guardsman bayonets.  Calls for the Guard troops to be recalled were refused.  This set the stage for Monday's tragedy.

It is not certain what triggered the firing.  Eyewitnesses said about 600 protestors surrounded a company of 100 Guardsmen and began pelting them with rocks and hunks of concrete.  A single shot rang out, whether from a guardsman's rifle or someone else's firearm, is unknown.  Without a warning, the guardsmen then began a three second volley, half of them pointing their guns into the air, the other aiming levelly—into the milling crowd of boys and girls.

Ohio National Guard members move toward students at Kent State University

Amont the dead were William K. Schroder, 19, a sophomore from Lorain, Ohio; Jeffery Miller, 19, a freshman from Plainview, New York; Sandra Lee Scheuer, 20, a junior from Youngstown, Ohio; and Allison Krause, a 19-year-old freshman from Pittsburgh.  John Cleary, 19, a freshman from Scotia, New York; Dean Kahler, a 20-year-old freshman from East Canton, Ohio; and Joseph Lewis, just 18, from Massillon, Ohio, were reported in critical condition at Robinson Memorial Hospital in nearby Ravenna.  They were not all protestors—indeed, Miss Krause had just telephoned her parents to express disgust at the demonstration. 

A wave of new protests is wracking the country, now with fresh ammunition.  And it is ammunition that is at the center of this outrage, for the Guard did not use tear gas, rubber bullets, or blanks.  Never mind if they should have been on the campus at all.  At the very least, their rules of engagement should not have incurred collateral deaths on innocent students.

There are just two positive consequences of this tragedy.  The first is that if the goal of calling in the Guard was to cow protestors, it has backfired spectacularly.  The second is that, on May 5, President Nixon announced that American troops would be withdrawn from Cambodia in seven weeks.  How much this decision is in reaction to the demonstrations and how much is due to the heavier-than-expected resistance of the Communists is presently unknown.

I suppose there's one more result—I've been radicalized, and I plan to start marching.  It's something I've always supported in the abstract, but observed a modicum of restraint, recalling Tom Lehrer's sentiment, "It takes a certain amount of courage to get up in a coffee house or college auditorium and come out in favor of the things that everybody else in the audience is against – like peace, and justice, and brotherhood, and so on."

But now we see that the audience doesn't all agree, and some of them shoot.  I know I'm in the over-30 untrustworthy set, but you'll see my grizzled mug in among the protestors in the weeks to come.

Congratulations, Dick—you managed something Lyndon couldn't.

Shards

And so I plunge into fiction, hoping for a relief from the growing madness.  I am greeted with more madness: each of the stories in The latest issue of Galaxy is broken into pieces, with their ends crammed into the latter half of the magazine, as if written like some strange BASIC program with too many GOTO commands.  Nevertheless, it's the stories that count.  How are they?

Picture of a multi-armed spacecraft sliding into a disc of blackness in front of the Moon
cover by Jack Gaughan illustrating The Moon of Thin Reality

In lieu of a traditional editor, editor Jakobsson gives us a page-long pitch for Heinlein's new serial, I Will Fear No Evil:

"Here is a novel that delivers, page by page, the thundering promise of its title.  Mr. Heinlein, I am convinced, fears no evil.  I like to think of myself as reasonably inured to the standard shivers but I found myself even more so after turning the last page.  Don't miss that feeling.  It's a good one."

I guess we'll see if it's a masterpiece, like The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, an overblown dud, like Stanger in a Strange Land…or a limp timewaster like Podkayne of Mars.

The Player at Yellow Silence, by Carl Jacobi

an illustration of a man carrying a golf club, pushing against a tornado of twisting faces and human figures. Beneath the title and author's name is the legend 'Unconquerable man meets unbeatable alien -- in a match for human souls!'
illustration by Jack Gaughan

As tension between the Terrans and the Yansis heats up, threatening to break out into war, a certain Joseph Forbes tries to calm things down by arranging an interstellar golf open.  Forbes is also rumored to be a healer, having brought a young woman who collapsed on a course back to life, and having restored the withered legs of another.  Oh, and he's also been witnessed speaking to some otherworldly patriarchal figure…

Yes, it's Arnold Palmer styled as the Prince of Peace.  I don't know.  It all seemed kind of stupid to me.

Two stars.

Out of Mindshot, by John Brunner

a greywash image of a woman clutching her head. Behind her, a crescent outline frames her body like wings. A hulking, shadowy figure is behind her, but also appears to be coming out of her head. The legend reads '
illustration by Jack Gaughan

A cruel, ambitious man is in the high desert on the trail of a telepathic young woman, hiding out from a society whose mental emanations are too painful for her to endure.  By cunning and force of arms, he plans to enslave her, using her powers to make him a fortune.

Ruthless and a combat veteran, he seems to have the upper hand.  But who between them really holds all the cards?

This is a brilliant little tale, ripe for adaptation for a Twilight Zone revival (perhaps a second Night Gallery?) It drips with color, the characters and setting richly described, the hunter's motivations introduced at a perfect pace, and the ending sweet and suitable.

Five stars.

Ship Me Tomorrow, by William Rotsler

an illustration of a small figure carving a colossal bust of a woman from stone. The legend reads 'When you buy a woman -- do you always sell a dream?'
illustration by Jack Gaughan

In an overcrowded, overmechanized, oversterile world, sometimes the only love you can rely on is the love you buy.  But is an android built to your specifications really what you're looking for?

Well, we'll never know since the story ends with our hero having ordered the robot but not yet having received her.

Buildup with no point.  Two stars.

Galaxy Book Shelf (Galaxy, June 1970), by Algis Budrys

the words 'Galaxy Book Shelf, Algis Budrys' in calligraphy inside a loop

In which Budrys praises T. L. Sherred's 1940's Astounding story "E for Effort" to the Moon—and expressed disappointment that Sherred's new novel, Alien Island, is a far lesser work.  Indeed, his thoughts closely mirror those of Brian when he covered the book earlier this year.  Budrys also notes that D.G. Compton's The Steel Crocodile is a fine book, provided you haven't read Synthajoy, which covers the same ground, but better.

Oil-Mad Bug-Eyed Monsters, by Hayden Howard

a pale pencil illustration of a wide-eyed face that might be human, or might be some sort of pig-faced thing.
illustration by Jack Gaughan

Not too long ago, a bunch of oil-eating bugs rammed their spaceship into a tanker, possessed the crew by inhabiting their bellies, and went to work buying up as many oil fields as possible.  This tale follows one of the invaders, encased in the body of a young, innocent-looking man, who is going house to house in a neighborhood that sits atop a potential drilling site, getting homeowners to sell their land.

The last holdout, a beautiful human, excites the borrowed gonads of the alien, causing him to embrace a dual motivation.

This is the second story of Howard's to involve an oil spill, the first appearing in Analog not too long ago.  I have to wonder if he lives within sight of Long Beach.  Anyway, this probably could have been an effective, unsettling tale in the hands of someone like Sturgeon or Ellison.  Hayden simply lacks the literary creativity to pull it off.  Instead, it's a highly repetitive, flat-lying piece with far too many references to bumping carapaces.

Two stars.

The Moon of Thin Reality, by Duncan Lunan

an image of a massive planet behind a smaller one. The legend reads 'Interface relays had opened the Universe to Man -- and his betters!'
illustration by Jack Gaughan

A Terran rescue ship, answering the distress call of an alien vessel, plunges wildly into hyperspace in an attempt to avoid crashing into the Moon on the way.  Both ships find themselves within the confines of a "Dyson Sphere" enclosing a red dwarf sun.  The science of this piece is immediately suspect: one of the characters observes that, because the star is a small one, it has a shorter lifespan.  We've known for some time that the longevity of a star is inversely proportional to its mass.

Anyway, because of the ships' initial velocity, they cannot circularize their orbit; they will intersect with the surface of the sphere.  All attempts at communication are answered with silence.  In desperation, the Terrans hurl the crippled, rescued ship at the shell.  Still no response.  But as the Terrans prepare to blast their way through with missiles, the sphere-builders make their presence known.

The story begins confusingly, such that I had to read the first page several times.  Ultimately, I gave up and figured things out in retrospect.  Once in the sphere, things move more smoothly, but the resolution is far too quick for the setup.  If you're going to introduce a civilization that can englobe a star, I want it to serve as more than a two-page gimmick.

Two stars.

The Tower of Glass (Part 3 of 3) , by Robert Silverberg

an immense, swift-sketched tower, drawn from the air. The only legend reads CONCLUSION in small letters.
illustration by Jack Gaughan

And now we pass the stone that is Silverbob's newest novel, taking up a good half of the magazine's pages.  The background is still the same: Simeon Krug's tachyonic transmission tower is rising above the Canadian tundra; Krug scion Manuel is diddling an upper-class android; the artificially generated humans are rallying for rights; female characters exist to be vessels for wombs, breasts and hips.

Some new developments: Manuel's android mistress Lillith Meson is actually manipulating Krug's son, showing him the sad plight of the androids to get him to sway his father into supporting their cause.  We learn that a twin project to Krug's tower is a relativistic space ship that can, in twenty years subjective, get to the system that is the source of the signal that triggered the building of the tower.

And that's it.

No, really.  Hardly a damned thing happens in these 70 pages, and what does happen is outlined at the beginning before being superfluously acted out in detail over the rest.  Lillith does show Manuel a "Gamma town" and the chapels where Beta androids worship the image of Krug and the holy DNA double-helix that emblemizes their artificial existence.  Manuel does confront his father.  His father has a mental communion with his right-hand robot, Thor Watchman, who discovers that his creator his human after all.  Over the course of a few pages, mass hysteria breaks out amongst the androids, the tower is sabotaged, and Krug flies off to deep space in the starship.  The end.

Along the way, we get some android sex, a lot of plodding descriptions of scenery and crowds, and a great deal of narrative repetition.  This is, in effect, an over-padded novelette.

Did I mention the boobs?

Tower of Glass reminds me of a lot of other pieces.  Dune Messiah for one, with its plodding pace and inaction.  Silverberg's own Up the Line—just substitute scenes of Canadian wastes, android worship, and futuristic drug trips for the tour of old Constantinople.  Silverberg can offer up compelling views of a weird tomorrow, even mixed with crackpot techno-religions: viz. his Blue Fire stories, but those also had plots, and none overstayed their welcome.

But if he really wanted to make a story about android liberation, or what it means to be human, he could have done a lot better than this piece with its MacGuffin Tower and its lifeless characters.

Two stars for this installment; two and a half for the whole.

Children's Crusade, by Lawrence Mayer

a loose portrait of a man in a high-collared leather biker jacket. He has shoulder-length hair and a sort of goatee-beard hybrid. He may be wearing a peasant blouse as well.
illustration by Jack Gaughan

Last up, but wedged in the middle of the above serial, is the second story published by Lawrence Mayer.  It follows the tribulations of Gladys and Herman Green, who give birth to a vampire.  It's a modern, technological kind of vampire—no supernatural beast, it just has a short, inefficient gut, large teeth, and can only survive on human blood.  And it's not alone; vampire babies are being born all over.

Being dutiful parents, the Greens nurse their child, though it is debilitating.  Sadly, all the vampire kids grow up to be no-goodniks, with lots of violence and leathers like you see in the biker movies.  I think Mayer is trying for Cheeky Metaphor.

He achieves Crashing Bore.  Two stars.

Crashing Down

The world explodes before our eyes; the world explodes inside our sanctuarial pages.  The Age of Aquarius is stillborn.  It's a hell of a time we live in.  Can anything get us out of this?  Perhaps… Dianetics?

an advertisement for Dianetics, and its accompanying convention in July.

No, probably not.

[New to the Journey? Read this for a brief introduction!]


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Magazine/Anthology, Science Fiction/Fantasy, Serial

[April 10, 1970] A Style in Treason (May 1970 Galaxy)

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[Be sure to tune in tonight at 7PM PDT for Science Fiction Theater!  It's Nimoytacular—plus Apollo 13 pre-launch coverage!]

A color photograph of Leonard Nimoy and a white woman standing together in front of a curtain.  He is looking down and to the right of the frame and the woman's eyes are closed as she leans on his shoulder.

photo of a man with glasses and curly, long, brown hair, and a beard and mustache
by Gideon Marcus

Backlash in D.C.

50,000 people marched on Washington last week protesting the course of the Vietnam War.  Sure, you think, another day ending in "y", right?

Except these kooks were protesting for the war!

A black and white photograph of a pro-war protest outdoors in Washington DC.  Government buildings are in the background.  In the foreground a group of white women are holding up a long banner which reads Let's Demand Victory in Vietnam. The woman at the center of the banner is holding two American flags crossed over her chest.  Behind them a crowd of people are holding up signs.  The only one legible reads In God We Trust.
Photo taken by Tom Norpell

Organized by a fundamentalist coalition, religious fervor dominated the gathering.  That said, there were plenty of Birchers and Nazis in attendance, too, making this a truly ecumenical demonstration.

A black and white photograph of white men marching down a city street while carrying banners on long poles.  At the top of each pole is a symbol of a lightning bolt inside a circle.  Beneath that a sign reads NSRP, the acronym for the National States Rights Party.  The banner extending down from the sign also has the circle-and-lightning-bolt motif, with God Bless America written above and below it. A crowd of onlookers is in the background.
Photo taken by Tom Norpell

There were even counter-counter protestors.

A black and white photograph of a white man with chin length dark hair standing outdoors.  He is wearing a knit cap and leather jacket and smoking a cigarette. He has his hands in his pockets and is frowning.  Over his jacket he is wearing a pillowcase with arm and head holes cut in the seams.  On it is painted Thou Shalt Not Kill. -God.  The center of the O in Not has a button attached to it showing a hand making a peace sign. A woman in an overcoat and rain hood is standing behind him.
Photo taken by Tom Norpell

Which poses the question: can Nixon still call them a "silent" majority?

A black and white photograph from a newspaper showing more of the people attending the pro-war protest.  In the center front is a man in a wheelchair holding an Merican flag, with another man standing behind him guiding the chair.  A woman to his left is holding a sign with multiple slogans pasted on it, including Stand Up for America and Wallace 72. In the background other protesters are carrying American flags as well as other signs, mostly reading In God We Trust or Victory in Vietnam. The newspaper caption reads: March for Victory: Some of the estimated 50,000 people who took part in the parade advocating victory in Vietnam as they assembled in Washington yesterday.

Calm after the storm

There's really nothing to protest in the latest issue of Galaxy, which offers, in the main, a pleasant reading experience.

A color photograph of the cover of the May 1970 edition of Galaxy Science Fiction Magazine Along the left side are listed stories by David Gerrold, James Blish, Avram Davidson, and Arthur C. Clarke.  The image shows a blue and black blob-like shape with multiple eye-like orbs embedded in it, against a yellow background.  Other orbs extend upwards from the blob, attached by black threads.  Parts of the blob seem to have been pulled up like pieces of dough around these upper orbs. The upper orbs have, from left to right, a green-cast image of half of a man's face (the other half is in shadow); A red-cast image of a man standing and looking outward; and a star or galaxy against a backdrop of outer space.
by Jack Gaughan for A Style in Treason

The DDTs, by Ejler Jakobsson

Our new(ish) editor starts with a rather odd screed against the banning of DDT.  What's a few birth defects compared to the plunge in malaria throughout the globe?

I understand the idea of "acceptable losses", but surely there must be a better way to combat disease than with malady.  Let's strive for the best of both worlds.

A Style in Treason, by James Blish

The two-page title spread for the story A Style in Treason.  The title, author, and story summary are written on the right-side page, superimposed over the image.  THe image shows a black and white charcoal collage-style drawing of many different faces of men and women in a variety of poses.  All are in light grey except one person near the center of the image who is drawn in stark black and white, looking up and to the left.
by Brock Gaughan

Two empires vie for control of the galaxy.  One is the realm of High Earth ("not necessarily Old Earth—but not necessarily not, either") .  The other is authoritarian Green Exarch, composed entirely of non-humans.  The humanoid worlds, and the ex-Earth planets, are fair game for both sides.  The plum of the spiral nebula, perhaps even the linchpin, is rich Boadicea, proud first to rebel against the cradle of humanity.  If one could claim that world as an ally—or a conquest—it could turn the galactic tides of fortune.

Enter Simon du Kuyl, Head Traitor (read: spy) of High Earth.  His plan is to appear to sell out High Earth but really buy Boadicea.  His sensitive information, that may or may not be true, is that High Earth and the Green Exarch are actually in limited collusion.  But the success of du Kuyl's mission lies in delivering this information to the right people at the right time, and perhaps even to be caught in the act.

This is an odd piece from Blish, a sort of Cordwainer Smith meets Roger Zelazny.  It feels a bit forced at times, and the ending is a touch opaque.  On the other hand, I like Cordwainer Smith, who is no longer offering up new sources.  And Zelazny's own works have been more than a bit forced (and opaque) these days.  In comparison, Blish's work feels the more grounded.

Four stars.

The God Machine, by David Gerrold

The two-page title spread for the story The God Machine.  The title, author, and story summary are written on the right-side page in a white space in the middle of the image.  It is unclear whether the image has been erased under the title or if there is simply a white space in the picture.  The picture is an abstract black and white drawing.  The outline is uneven and curves around the page, and is filled in with straight lines and cross-hatched shading.  At the center of the left-side page, a circular graphic is superimposed, consisting of seven birds surrounding and facing inward toward a circle with the letters SS inside it.
by Jack Gaughan

As I guessed might happen last time, the tales of HARLIE (Human Analogue Robot, Life Input Equivalents) the sapient machine continue.  This is a direct sequel to the first story, in which HARLIE occasionally "trips out", distorting his inputs so as to stimulate gibberish output.  Now we find out why he's doing it.

HARLIE wants to know the meaning of life, particularly the meaning of his life.  Auberson, his liaison and "father" is stumped.  After all, if humans haven't figured that out, how can we explain it to a machine, however human?

In the end, HARLIE decides religion is the answer…but whose religion?  His?

Once again, a pretty good tale, although the pages of CAPITAL LETTER DIALOGUE WITHOUT PUNCTUATION CAN BE HARD TO FOLLOW.  Also, Gerrold hasn't yet figured out how to write convincing romance.

Three stars.

Neutron Tide, by Arthur C. Clarke

This very short piece is mostly a set-up for a truly bad pun, but I appreciated how it takes the piss out of Niven's Neutron Star by demonstrating the physical impossibility of a close approach to such an object.

Three stars.

The two-page title spread for the story Neutron Tide.  The title and author's name are written on the right-side page, superimposed over the right edge of the image, which is mostly on the left-side page.  A series of concentric circles suggest a neutron star.  A blocky object appears to be flying toward it, with flames extending backward from it toward the viewer.
by Jack Gaughan

The Tower of Glass (Part 2 of 3), by Robert Silverberg

The two-page title spread for the story The Tower of Glass, Part II.  THe title and author's name are written at the top of the left-side page.  Below, and then extending upward toward the right, the image shows a tower extending toward the sky in sharply forced perspective. At its base, people appear to be congregating around a blocky machine.  In the right foreground, a woman with a scared expression extends a hand palm-out toward the viewer as if to stop something, while her other hand clutches her chest.
by Jack Gaughan

The tale of old Krug's tower, the one that will reach 1500 meters in height to communicate with the stars, continues.  Not much happens in this installment.  Krug's ectogene (artificial womb) assistant Spaulding demands to see the android shrine.  Krug's android right-hand man Thor Watchman misdirects him with tragic results: when two members of the Android Equality Party approach Krug, Spaulding assumes it is an assassination attempt, and he kills one of them.  This causes a crisis in faith among the androids who worship Krug as a redeemer.

If the pace is rather turgid, the philosophical points raised are fascinating.  Four stars.

Timeserver, by Avram Davidson

The title image for the story Timeserver.  The title, author, and story summary are written below the image.  The image shows charcoal line drawings of three men who appear to be inside a drinking glass. One faces down with hands on knees as though he had just finished a race.  One faces the viewer as though preparing to run.  The third stands upright but leaning to the side as if drawing back from something he is looking at on the ground.
by Jack Gaughan

This story is about a fellow who lives in an overcrowded, underloving future.  Surcease from gloom is gotten by scraping off the scarred outer layers of one's psyche, exposing the unsullied id for a short while.  Except our story's hero has been crushed by society so long, there's really nothing underneath.

These days, Davidson is writing nonsense that makes R. A. Lafferty scratch his head.  Both facile and confusing, I didn't like it much.  Two stars.

Galaxy Bookshelf (Galaxy, May 1970), by Algis Budrys

The title image for the Galaxy Bookshelf column by Algis Budrys.  The words are written in a calligraphic font inside a square border with rounded corners.  Stars and planets are drawn around and inside the words.

Budrys devotes his entire column to savaging Silverberg's Up the Line:

Maybe he just wanted to write some passages about Constantinople and going to bed with Grandma.  That would be a pretty smart-arse thing to do, though, considering how much auctorial effort and reader seventy-five centses are involved here.

It's a non-book.  I guess that's what Up the Line is.  It isn't sf — neither tech fiction nor any other previously recognized kind.  It's a new kind of non-book.  And as you may have gathered, it doesn't even find anything new in Grandma.

Whatever Became of the McGowans?, by Michael G. Coney

A black and white line drawing.  In the foreground stand three people who appear to be turning into trees.  Their arms end in branches, and twigs extend from their heads, backs, and shoulders.  They no longer have facial features.  In the background, two people stand in high grass.  They are holding hands and looking at the trees.  A stylized sun is overhead.
by Jack Gaughan

The planet Jade seems like a paradise—setting aside the complete lack of animal life and the eerie quiet.  A couple has settled down to raise Jade Grass for export; their only disappointment is that their neighbors, the McGowans, seem to have disappeared.

As the months go by, unsettling things happen.  Time seems to rush by.  The settler couple and their new baby develop a kind of jaundiced skin.  They feel compelled to spend all of their time naked in the sun.  Eventually, their feet grow roots…

The scientific explanation at the end the weak point of this story, just complete nonsense, and unnecessary.  The rest of the story, though, is really nicely told.  It feels very '50s Galaxy, which is not a bad mood to evoke.

Three stars.

Sunpot (Part 4 of 4), by Vauhn Bodé

The title images for the story Sunpot.  The title, author, and story summary are written above the images, which are in two panels like a comic strip.  The left shows a phallic spaceship above a planet, with a nearby star and its corona in the background among a sea of stars. The right panel shows the same spaceship and planet from a different angle - this time the planet is above the spaceship, and the sea of stars is below.

The Sunpot crashes into Venus. 

Two stars.

The Editorial View: Overkill, by Frederik Pohl

The ex-editor of Galaxy offers up a short piece noting the correlation between the rate of infant mortality and the era of above-ground nuclear bomb testing.  Apparently, kids were dying less and less in infancy…until Strontium 90 entered the environment in a big way.  For 15 years, until the Test Ban Treaty, infant mortality no longer declined.  Now it has resumed its drop.

Correlation is not causation, but folks are at least starting to investigate the possible connection.

Summing Up

And there you have it!  A perfectly decent read, trodding the middle road between The New Thing and Nostalgia.  I like Jakobssons's mag, and I intend to continue my subscription when it comes up.

A black and white image of the subscription reminder at the end of the magazine.  It reads: REMEMBER: new subscriptions and changes of address require 5 weeks to process!

[New to the Journey? Read this for a brief introduction!]


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[April 2, 1970] Being Human (May-June 1970 IF)

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A white man with short gray hair poses in front of a wooden wall. He is wearing a gray blazer, yellow shirt, and black necktie, and is smiling toward the left of the viewer.
by David Levinson

Counting coups

March saw not one, but two attempts to overthrow the established government in smaller countries. One failed, but the other looks like it may have succeeded.

A color geographic and political map of the Mediterranean basin, showing the island of Cyprus in the middle of the image.
Cyprus is the island south of Turkey, west of Syria, north of Egypt

Cyprus is a troubled nation. The populace is divided between those of Greek and Turkish decent, and the long-running hostility between Greece and Turkey spilled over to Cyprus. When the island sought independence from the United Kingdom, Greek Cypriots hoped for eventual union with Greece, which was not acceptable to Turkish Cypriots. The British were able to block annexation (or enosis, as it is called in Cyprus) as a condition for independence, but relationships within the island are so rocky that UN peacekeepers had to be brought in to keep the two populations from each other’s throats.

A major figure in the independence movement was Orthodox Archbishop Makarios III, who has led the country ever since. Before independence, he was a strong supporter of enosis, but was persuaded to accept that it would have to be put off as a hoped for future event. Makarios isn’t terribly popular with western leaders; he’s been a major voice in the Non-aligned Movement. Some in Washington have taken to calling him “the Castro of the Mediterranean.” In the last few years, he’s made himself unpopular at home as well. He’s taken away guarantees of Turkish representation in government and has also moved away from the idea of enosis. His justification is the Greek military coup of 1967, stating that joining Cyprus to Greece under a dictatorship would be a disservice to all Cypriots.

A white man with short gray hair poses in front of a wooden wall. He is wearing a gray blazer, yellow shirt, and black necktie, and is smiling toward the left of the viewer.Archbishop Makarios III visiting the Greek royal family in exile in Rome earlier this year.

On March 8th, somebody tried to kill Makarios. His helicopter was brought down by withering, high-powered fire. Makarios was uninjured, but the pilot was severely wounded. Fortunately, nobody else was on board. At least 11 people have been arrested, all of Greek heritage and strong supporters of enosis. Given the military nature of the weapons used, some are also accusing the Greek Junta of involvement.

Meanwhile in south-east Asia, Prince Norodom Sihanouk is out as the leader of Cambodia. Like Makarios, he hasn’t been popular in the west, due to his cozy relations with both the Soviet Union and the People’s Republic of China. He’s also allowed Cambodian ports to be used for bringing in supplies for the North Vietnamese army and the Viet Cong, while also ignoring the use of Cambodian territory as part of the Ho Chi Minh Trail.

A color geographic and political map of the southeast Asian peninsula, with Cambodia in the center of the image.

Sihanouk was out of the country when anti-North Vietnamese riots erupted both in the east of the country and in Phnom Penh. Things quickly got out of hand, with the North Vietnamese embassy being sacked. By the 12th, the government canceled trade agreements with North Vietnam, closed the port of Sihanoukville to them, and issued an ultimatum that all North Vietnamese Army and Viet Cong forces were to leave the country within 72 hours. When the demand wasn’t met, 30,000 protesters rallied outside the National Assembly against the Vietnamese.

On the 18th, The Assembly met and voted unanimously (except for one member who walked out in protest) to depose Sihanouk as the head of state. Prime Minister Lon Nol has assumed the head-of-state powers on an emergency basis. On the 23rd, Sihanouk, speaking by radio from Peking, called for an uprising against Lon Nol, and large demonstrations followed. A few days later, two National Assembly deputies were killed by the protesters. The demonstrations were then put down with extreme violence.

Two black and white photos.  On the left, Prince Sihanouk stands outside in front of several other men.  He has black hair and a concerned expression.  He is wearing a suit and tie and an overcoat, and is gesticulating with one hand while looking to the right of the photographer.  On the right, a head shot of Prime Minister Lon Nol.  He has gray hair and is wearing a black suit and tie.  He looks directly at the camera with a neutral expression.l: Prince Sihanouk in Paris shortly before his ouster. R: Prime Minister Lon Nol.

Where this will lead is anybody’s guess. The new government (it should be noted that the removal of Sihanouk appears to have been completely legal) has clearly abandoned the policy of neutrality and threatened North Vietnam with military action. Hanoi isn’t going to take that lying down; if the war spreads to Cambodia, will the Nixon administration expand American involvement? Add in Sihanouk urging resistance to Lon Nol and the deep reverence for the royal family held by many Cambodians, and it all looks like a recipe for chaos.

What is man

Some of the stories in this month’s IF deal directly or tangentially with what it is that makes humans human. The front cover also raises a question that we don’t have an answer to. We’ll get to that at the end; let’s look at the issue first.

The cover of the May-June 1970 edition of Worlds of If science fiction magazine. The magazine name and edition date are written in yellow across the top of the cover, except the word IF which appears in large white letters over a red rectangle.  Below this is a color painting of a white man's head staring directly out at the viewer. At the top of his head there are black lava-rock-like shapes that appear to be exploding out from his forehead.  The head appears to be emerging from a red and yellow pool of lava which is surrounded by dark swirls around the edge of the pool. At the bottom of the cover titles are listed: Novelette The Piecemakers, by Kieth Laumer; The Reality Trip by Robert Silverberg; Zon by Avram Davidson; Troubleshooter by Michael G. Coney. To the right the tagline of the magazine reads: If, the magazine of alternatives.Suggested by Troubleshooter. Art by Gaughan

The Reality Trip, by Robert Silverberg

What appears to be David Knecht is actually a small, crab-like alien inside a humanoid robot. He has spent 11 long years on Earth, studying it, possibly as reconnaissance for an invasion. Things start to go wrong when a young woman living in his residential hotel falls in love with him.

A black and white drawing of a crab like alien in a small white oval enclosure.  It is using its many legs to push levers and press buttons while looking at clocklike displays on the sides of the oval. Outside the oval what appear to be nerves and cells, drawn as lines and polygons and dots, drawn in white on a black background, flow outward from the levers and buttons.The real David Knecht. Art uncredited, but probably Gaughan

There’s the basis here for a really good story about alienation, isolation, and communication; Silverberg might even be the right person to write it. Unfortunately, he missed the mark. Not by much, but there’s a lack of emotion to the first person narrative, even when emotion is being expressed. There’s also the all too common Silverberg issue of highly sexualized descriptions of the female character. It’s especially off-putting and unnecessary coming from such a non-human character.

Three stars.

Troubleshooter, by Michael G. Coney

DeGrazza is a troubleshooter for Galactic Computers, sent out by the company whenever a client is having problems that no one else can solve. Following a disastrous mission which has left him shell-shocked, he’s called back from leave early to find out why spaceships in the Altairid system keep disappearing. Plagued by nightmares, if he can’t pull himself together he may soon be the victim of the next disappearance.

A black and white pen and ink drawing of a man staring directly at the viewer.  The background is shaded in cross hatches.  As in the cover image above, black lava rock like shapes appear to be exploding out of his forehead.Art uncredited, but since it’s nearly identical to the cover it must be by Gaughan

Combat fatigue, shell-shock, whatever they’re calling it these days for the boys coming back from Vietnam, science fiction has far too rarely dealt with that sort of trauma. When it has, it’s always the result of combat; this story takes the unusual step of pointing out that it’s not only war that can cause it. Coney isn’t quite up to his theme—downplaying DeGrazza’s mental state, for example—but he made a good effort.

A high three stars.

The Piecemakers, by Keith Laumer

Two-fisted interstellar diplomat Retief is back. He and his frequent boss Magnan have been sent alone to mediate a war between the Groaci and the Slox, neither of which has asked for or wants Terran meddling. The usual nonsense ensues.

A black and white drawing of a man and an alien having a conversation.  On the left, the man is in a tailcoat, dress pants, and knee high spats and is sitting on one of a series of mushroom-like growths, gesturing with one hand.  He is facing toward the alien, which resembles a huge bell-like flower rooted into the right side of the image, but with eyestalks and a tongue-like extrusion coming out of the inside of the flower bell.  Other, smaller bells appear to be growing from the side of the stalk.  The man's head is close enough to the bell to almost be inside it but not quite.As usual, Retief makes friends with the locals. Art probably by Gaughan

It’s been about a year since the last Retief story, and broad spacing between them helps. But it’s still the same old pattern. If you’re familiar with Retief, you know what you’re getting and if you’ll like it. If you aren’t, this isn’t the best place to start, but it’s not the worst either.

Three stars.

Human Element, by Larry Eisenberg

A wealthy young woman visits a gambling mecca and requests an android assistant. The good part is that Eisenberg isn’t trying to be funny; unfortunately, he doesn’t really develop his theme. He’s not helped by the fact that Robert Silverberg’s The Tower of Glass currently running in Galaxy is covering the same ground. It’s all right, but maybe I’m better disposed towards it for not being an Emmett Duckworth story.

Three stars.

The Nightblooming Saurian, by James Tiptree, Jr.

Tiptree’s latest is a trifle, really just a set-up for some not very funny scatological humor. It concerns a group of time traveling scientists studying pre-humans in Olduvai Gorge. They’re worried about budget cuts, but a non-scientific member of the team has promised a member of the budget committee a dinosaur hunt to get him to look favorably on the project. The problem, of course, is that Dr. Leakey’s proto-humans came tens of millions of years after the dinosaurs went extinct.

Barely three stars.

Reading Room, by Lester del Rey

A black and white image of an architectural drawing of a rectangular room, with an inward-opening door symbolized in the upper left corner.  In the center of the rectangle the title, Reading Room, written in a swooping serifed font. Below the title, the author's name, Lester Del Ray, is written in smaller block capitals.

This month, del Rey looks at three books he considers experimental in some way. The first is The Eleventh Galaxy Reader, where the experiment is that the stories were chosen by the readers. In 1968, Galaxy polled subscribers to determine the best stories of the year, with large cash prizes for the best. More clearly experimental is John Brunner’s Stand on Zanzibar. Unlike most reviewers, del Rey is neither hot nor cold (our own Jason Sacks gave it five stars); he enjoyed much of it, but feels that Brunner let form distract him from story. Finally, there’s Lord Tyger by Philip José Farmer, about an attempt to produce a real-life Tarzan. Lester isn’t too keen on the result, but he likes the honest look at the underlying ideas of Burroughs’ creation.

The Misspelled Magician (Part 1 of 2), by David Gerrold and Larry Niven

Two familiar names have teamed up to bring us a story about magic and science. Larry Niven should need no introduction for regular readers of science fiction over the last five years, while David Gerrold scripted a couple of Star Trek episodes and looks to be making the jump to print.

A human scientist has landed on an alien world and runs afoul of local customs, all told from the viewpoint of the locals. They see “Purple” (as they come to call him from what his translation device says his name is) as just another wizard, one who is trespassing on the turf of their own without making the proper overtures. This installment ends with local wizard Shoogar performing a mighty curse on Purple’s “nest,” leaving it in the river.

A black and white drawing of an alien landscape. In the foreground, a stampede of alien animals is running toward the left of the image.  A black bubble floats up from the animals, in which is written The Misspelled Magician, by David Gerrold and Larry Niven.  In the background a humanoid figure appears in silhouette between two clumps of trees.  It is raising one arm as if to shake its fist.The mud creatures rise to attack. Art by Gaughan

So far, so good. It’s a well-told examination of Arthur C. Clarke’s assertion that sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. When Purple tries to explain that he uses science, not magic, his translator uses the same word for both terms.

But there’s a problem, a big one: the authors are trying to be funny. This mostly comes out in the names of the various local gods. For example, there’s Rotn’bair, the god of sheep, whose symbol is the horned box; his great enemy is Nils’n, the god of mud creatures, whose symbol is a diagonal line with an empty circle on either side (i.e. %). There’s a lot of this; the narrator’s two sons, who make bicycles, are named Wilville and Orbur. It really distracts from an otherwise good story.

Three stars for now, maybe less if you have a low tolerance for the humor.

Zon, by Avram Davidson

A man called Rooster crosses a wasteland, possibly many generations after WWIII, in search of a wife. His search takes him to a stronghold of Zons (clearly shortened from Amazons) just as their Mother King lies dying.

A black and white pen-and-ink drawing of an outside post-apocalyptic scene, with tattered tents and exposed building girders.  In the foreground a man stands facing away from the viewer.  His left hand is upraised in a wave and his right is pulling what looks like a leash that extends out of the image without showing what's on the other end.  In the background, groups of people appear to be fighting and arguing.  Some appear to be women and others are of indeterminate sex.Rooster arrives at the Zon burrough (that’s not a misspelling). Art by Gaughan

Apart from the last couple Orbits, it’s been a while since we’ve heard from Avram Davidson. This has that Davidson feel to it, but somewhat darker in tone than is usual for him. I don’t think I can say how well he handled certain aspects of a society completely without men, but it seems better than most would have done. And despite the darkness, it ends hopefully and beautifully.

A high three stars

Summing up

Another straight C issue. I keep hoping for something better, but I’m grateful we aren’t getting anything worse. I wonder, though, if there are clouds on the horizon. This is the second straight issue without an “IF first” new author and the fifth without an editorial. Look again at the cover; it’s dated May-June. Is this a one time thing, or is IF going bimonthly? What does that portend? Some word from the editor about what’s going on would be greatly appreciated.

Black and white text from the back of the magazine reads: Subscribe now to the new If, the magazine of alternatives. I’m not sure I’d subscribe without some explanation of what’s going on.




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[March 8, 1970] They say that it's the institution… (April 1970 Galaxy and the incomplete Court)

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[New to the Journey? Read this for a brief introduction!]

photo of a man with glasses and curly, long, brown hair, and a beard and mustache
by Gideon Marcus

There ain't no Justice

It was only a few months that President Dicky tried to ram a conservative Supreme Court justice pick through the Senate to replace the seat left open by the retirement of the much laureled Chief Justice Earl Warren.  Clement Haynworth's candidacy went down to defeat in the Senate on November 21 of last year.

Now up is G. Harrold Carswell, until last year, the Chief Justice of the United States District Court for the Northern District of Florida.  He was elevated to the Fifth Circuit Appellate Court last June.  To all accounts, he is no less conservative than his predecessor, and he's a (former?) segregationist to boot.  His jurisprudence is also lacking: 40% of his rulings were overturned on appeal!  As Senator McGovern observed, "I find his record to be distinguished largely by two qualities: racism and mediocrity."  Nebraska's Senator Hruska damned with faint praise in his reply, to the effect saying, "Sure he's mediocre…but don't the mediocre warrant representation, too?"

Black-and-white photograph of a white man wearing a judge's robes.
G. Harrold Carswell

But as LIFE and other outlets are noting, Nixon's soothing rhetoric thinly veils a deeply conservative agenda, cutting social programs, withdrawing from world affairs, and trying to stack the Court with allies.  Carswell's nomination passed the Senate Judiciary Committee on February 16 of this year.  We'll see if the Senate as a whole can stomach him for the Court proper.

Plus ça change

Galaxy's editor Eljer Jakobsson is like Richard Nixon (well, perhaps this is a stretch, but indulge me—I need some sort of transition here!) He is trying all of the styles at his disposal in this new decade of the 1970s and seeing what sticks.  The result remains inconsistent, but not unworthy.

This month's issue trumpets Silverbob's newest serial (sure to be novelized, perhaps as we speak) The Tower of Glass.  Stephen Tall has the lead "breakthrough novelette", which I presumed meant this was his first work, but checking my index cards, I see it's not, since he first wrote a story for Worlds of Tomorrow four years ago.  And then there's Ray Bradbury, undeservedly getting a third of the cover's masthead, presumably because of his pop culture stature.

The editor starts out the issue with an interesting piece, noting that even if there something to genetic races, it's meaningless anyway because none of us stick exclusively to our own (something folks of my persuasion blame on how lovely those shiksas always end up…) It's short and sweet.  Then it's onto the "breakthrough novelette".

Allison, Carmichael and Tattersall, by Stephen Tall

Ink drawing of the faces of three men wearing astronaut helmets, shown against a background of black space. Text next to the drawing says: Allison, Carmichael and Tattersall. Space history echoes with their achievements. If you haven't yet read about them, start now! Text further below shows the name Stephen Tall.
illustration by Jack Gaughan

The three names in the title belong to a trio of compatible astronauts sent on the first expedition to the Jovian moon, Callisto.  A biologist, a mathematician, and a computer engineer, the three have just barely settled in for the several month trip when the first of them, Tattershall, makes an interesing hypothesis: space is a near vacuum but not a complete one—what if the interplanetary cosmos harbors life?  Incredibly diffuse, extremely voluminous life, to be sure.  Unrecognizable at a passing glance, certainly.  But there, nonetheless.

Seek, and ye shall find.  As the Albratross sails for Jupiter, the ship sails by and inside a number of planetoid-sized creatures, sensed only by their abnormal particle densities.  Unfortunately for the "Callistonauts", one of them take a fancy for their krypton-powered engine, and their fuel supply soon becomes dangerously depleted.

If this story appeared in Analog, it'd be a thrilling (or maybe just turgidly technical) SF action piece.  In F&SF, maybe fantastically whimsical or horrific.  Here, it's… pleasant.  More inches are devoted to the genial interactions of the tic-tac-toe playing Allison and Carmichael, the blissful absorption in ant farms of Tattershall, and the dietary proclivities of all three.  Plus, lots of discussion of biology.

Frankly, I suspect space life as posited by Tall is impossible.  Things don't scale like that (and someone tell Irwin Allen…) Still, it's a nice story.

Three stars.

Discover a Latent Moses, by Michael G. Coney

Two-page spread. On the left-hand page is the title: Discover a Latent Moses, then the name of the author, Michael G. Coney, and text further below says: Green Earth was a memory, and memories were not for builders. On the right-hand page is an ink drawing of the top portion of a tower in ruins, the rest of which is covered by the sands of a vast desert.
illustration by Jack Gaughan

Here are the adventures of Jacko, Paladin, Switch, Cockade, and the Old Man, a band of humans surviving the Fifth Ice Age perhaps fifty years from now.  They live under a dozen feet of snow in an entombed town, surviving on canned food and bottled booze.  But they dream of land in the warmer West… if only they can outmaneuver the winged, snow skiing, Flesh Eaters.  It reminds me of a bit of Michael Moorcock's series involving the ice schooner.

It's never explained what causes the big freeze.  The general consensus of scientists is that industrial emissions will cause a global warming, but I've read at least one article lately that suggests smog particles will block the Sun and cause cooling.  Maybe that's it.  Or maybe, like in Robert Silverberg's Time of the Great Freeze, the next Ice Age will trump any artificial effects.

Anyway, the story is excitingly told and the characters vivid, if cardboard.  It's enjoyable reading, but it brings little new to the table.

Three stars.

The Tower of Glass (Part 1 of 3), by Robert Silverberg

Two-page spread with an ink drawing of amorphous gelatinous blobs that seem alive. At the bottom of the right-hand page is the title: The Tower of Glass, the name of the author, Robert Silverberg, and text further below says: Krug rivaled God Almighty as the creator of Heaven and Earth and Man. Now he just wanted to talk to all three of them!
illustration by Jack Gaughan

Robert Silverberg sure loves him some dark futures.

Over the next several decades, the world will undergo plague and war that mow down the Third World.  Birth control and ennui take care of the rest.  But the productivity of the race remains as high as ever, thanks to mechanization, computerization…and the development of androids.  These perfect physical specimens range from moronic (the gammas) to brilliant (the rarefied alphas—someone's been reading Huxley), and they fill the role of technician, nanny, nurse, and (but only secretly) lover.

The much-reduced human population lives effete, rich, and pampered, interplanetary and even nearby interstellar, knit globally by a network of "transmats" that eliminate commutes and homogenize culture.  This, then, is the world 250 years hence, contemporary with Star Trek, but oh so different.

For one thing, this is no utopia.  The androids seem quiescent, but there is indication that they might be on the verge of insurrection, or perhaps being manipulated to do so by human interests.  And then there are the women…

Silverberg seems to hate worlds in which women are anything but shallow playthings.  There is no narrative reason for women to get such short shrift in this story, and they do in all of Bob's stories, so I suspect it's more tic, less deliberate intent.

Anyway, that's the background.  The story involves billionaire Simeon Krug and the constellation of relatives, top staff, and associates who surround him.  Krug is building a 600 meter transmission tower in the tundras of Ontario to reply to a message recently received from the stars: "2-4, 2-5, 1-3" repeated ad nauseum.

So far, the story seems to be about thwarted expectations: Krug is disappointed that the alien senders seem to hail from a bright O-class star, precluding anything akin to humanity.  His son is dissatisfied with both his unexciting human wife and his vat-produced android paramour.  The android foreman Thor Watchman is dissatisfied with a nameless something, probably attached to his inferior position in human society, even as one of the most powerful beings on Earth.

It's all written with Silverberg's usual, if somewhat overdramatic, brilliance and not a little emphasis on sex.  There are some very nifty concepts here, from the eternal dawn or noon that teleportation affords, to the "jacking in" to vast computet networks (the ultimate evolution of ARPANET, perhaps).

So, bad taste in my mouth aside, I am interested to see where this goes.  It's in the same vein as his blue fire stories, which I liked.

Four stars.

Darwin, the Curious, by Ray Bradbury, Darwin, in the Fields, by Ray Bradbury, and Darwin, Wandering Home at Dawn, by Ray Bradbury

A trio of pointless poems from the master of mawk: what if Chas sat in a field all day, and on the way home, passed a fox?

Two stars—the illustrations illuminating them are nice.

The Rub, by A. Bertram Chandler

Two-page spread. On the left-hand page is an ink drawing of a woman looking in horror at a humanoid figure crawling on the ceiling. On the right-hand page is the name of the author, A. Bertram Chandler, additional text that says: Can anything be more terrifying than realizing all your dreams? and the title: The Rub. The text of the story begins below the title.
illustration by Jack Gaughan

The adventures of John Grimes, intrepid if cantankerous officer of the Space Scout Service, have been going on for more than a decade.  Like Horatio Hornblower, we've now gotten most of his career, from Ensign through Commodore.  There's not a lot of room left to fill.  How then can Chandler keep this cash cow going?

Why, by returning to the mystical planet of Kinsolving, where dreams become reality.  In this case, Grimes ends up in a nightmare parallel universe where, instead of meeting his lovely wife, Sonya, and advancing to flag rank, he instead marries a shrew and ends up in a dead-end job as commander of a fourth-rate backwater base.

And yet, even schlub Grimes has got a touch of that seadog magic…

I quite enjoyed this story, although it ends just a touch too abruptly.  Four stars.

Sunpot (Part 3 of 4), by Vaughn Bodé

Drawn illustration of an irregularly-shaped spaceship near a big round planet floating in black space. Above the illustration is text in cartoonish letters. First is the title: Sunpot, by Vaughn Bodé. Next to it is this text: Sunpot, the planet, moves across the quiet opulence of fat solar space like the great red phallic temple of Brother Mercury... White Venus awaits in the distance.
illustration by Vaughn Bodé

The adventures of the Sunpot continue to take turns for the worse—this time, the pages aren't even printed in the right order.

I said one star last time, but there's (a little) less sexism this time, and the pictures are pretty, even if the typeface is still illegible.

Two stars.

Galaxy Bookshelf, by Algis Budrys

An elegant piece of calligraphy with the words: Galaxy Bookshelf, Algis Budrys. Tiny stars decorate the space around the letters.

The magazine's book column is devoted solely to The Universal Baseball Association, Inc, by J. Henry Waugh.  It is about a fellow who creates his own private universe, centered around a baseball team, using a self-devised chart and dice to randomly determine what happens next.  It's a bit like how Philip K. Dick created The Man in the High Castle (he used bamboo sticks and the I Ching.

As Budrys puts it:

It does convey a convincing approximation of how a God might be infinitely creative and yet not in direct control of his creation, omnipotent and yet prey to events, omniscient and nevertheless blind to the future.

Though not technically SF or F, and thus perhaps not sold in the same outlets as our beloved regulars, Budrys recommends in no uncertain terms that we read it.

No Planet Like Home, by Robert Conquest

Undecipherable drawing composed of multiple circular shapes that resemble eyes.
illustration by Jack Gaughan

A race of humanoid aliens, prone to frequent mutation, wrings their collective hands over what to do about a comically tragic pinhead nephew of a Senator.  The aliens scour the galaxy until they find a race that constitutes a close physical match so they can deposit the hapless lad on their world.

Three guesses which world, and the first two don't count.

Two stars for being obvious.

Kindergarten, by James E. Gunn

Heavily darkened illustration, probably shaped like a coastline seen from above.
illustration by Jack Gaughan

Speaking of, here's a (charmingly illustrated) tale about a precocious child who creates a planet for his amusement, but its inhabitants are too dangerous to be allowed to live.  The world's genesis takes, of course, six days.  The name of the planet is…

Well, you already know the answer.

Two stars.

Diverging courses

The Supreme Court's constitution has evolved since 1950, becoming for a time one of the most liberal Courts in the nation's history.  The building remains the same, but the members change…and only time will tell if we'll be happy with the new direction.

The magazine that Gold launched in 1950 also continues its slow, insensible slide toward whatever lies ahead in the '70s.  It still retains the same dimensions as when it started, the same tactile feel to its cover and pages.  But its cover art, its typeface, its stable of authors, the literary style, all have evolved.  Perhaps not always for the better, but generally still worthy.

Sure, I'll renew.

Page of a magazine. At the top is a drawing of a man standing next to a crashed car. Below it is this text: It doesn't take a genius to figure out how much you hate missing the best story of you favorite writer or the major part of a great novel. But we can't compute a formula to stock every newsstand in the country with enough copies of our popular magazines to satisfy every reader. So we sometimes miss you and you miss us, and that's a double tragedy. But there's an answer. It doesn't take a genius to handle it either. All it takes is a minute of your time, for which we want to repay you with a handsome saving over the newsstand price. Just fill in the coupon or write the information on a piece of plain paper and mail it to us. Then you'll be sure instead of sorry. To the right of this text is a sample cover of Galaxy magazine, showing an illustration of a woman's face inside concentric curves. At the bottom of the page is a form to order a magazine subscription.

[New to the Journey? Read this for a brief introduction!]


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Magazine/Anthology, Science Fiction/Fantasy, Serial

[March 2, 1970] Par for the course (April 1970 IF)

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by David Levinson

The Veep that couldn’t shoot straight

I’m no fan of golf (unless it involves little windmills), but a lot of people seem to like it. They show it on TV and not a week goes by without at least one golf joke in the funny pages. It also intersected with politics last month. February continues to be the month that gives me very little to talk about, so I guess this is it.

The Professional Golfers’ Association likes to start their tour early in the pleasant climes of Hawaii and California. One such event is the Bob Hope Desert Classic held on a variety of courses in the Coachella Valley near Palm Springs. The highlight of the tournament for many is the pro-am event, where the pros competing in the tournament are matched with (celebrity) amateurs for one day’s round.

Pro Doug Sanders—best known for his odd swing and dapper dress—found himself in a foursome with Bob Hope, California Senator (and former song-and-dance man) George Murphy, and Vice President Spiro Agnew. On his very first shot, the Veep managed to hook the ball so far to the left it ended up on the path for an adjacent fairway. (Probably the farthest left he’s gone since being elected governor.) Trying to get back to the right fairway, he then sliced hard to the right. (This whole thing is starting to sound like a metaphor for Agnew’s political career.)

Bob Hope and Doug Sanders were standing in the path of the ball. Hope managed to duck out of the way, but Sanders was struck on the head. The blow drew blood, which Hope mopped up with a towel. Agnew was duly apologetic, and Sanders played gamely onward. At the nine-hole break, he was examined by a doctor, and the wound was sprayed with a pain-deadener.

Wire photo of Doug Sanders, Vice President Agew, and Bob Hope Wire photo of the aftermath.

Agnew went on to have a terrible day. He frequently missed putts and took penalties for giving up on a hole. As the AP put it, “Agnew chatted amiably with the fans when his ball landed in or near them, which was often.” Sanders didn’t do much better, though he was already having a poor tournament. He won $200, far less than the top prize of $25,000. Agnew rather crassly quipped that it should just about cover his medical bills.

Am I picking on Spiro Agnew? Yes. Yes, I am. After his recent attack on the press, he deserves all the opprobrium he can get. He’s already being talked about as the clear front-runner for the Republicans in 1976. Let’s nip that idea in the bud right now.

Down the fairway

When he took over as editor, Ejler Jakobsson got off to a strong start. Since then, there’s been something of a return to form, although those C+ to B- issues have felt fresher than they did in recent years under Fred Pohl. Has he sent this issue cleanly down the fairway, hit a hole in one, or—worst of all—smacked the reader in the head with an errant shot? Let’s find out.

Cover of the April 1970 edition of if Science Fiction, featuring a large undersea robot illustration. Art for Waterclap by Gaughan.Arrival at Ocean-Deep. Art for “Waterclap” by Gaughan

Waterclap, by Isaac Asimov

The long-standing lunar base and the new deep sea base at the bottom of the Puerto Rico Trench must compete for the limited financial resources offered by the Planetary Project Council. After the first fatal accident on the Moon, safety engineer Stephen Demerest travels to Ocean-Deep, ostensibly to learn more about their safety procedures. His real purpose is to convince them to turn down any increase in funding at the expense of the Moon base, and he’s willing to take extreme measures.

Black and white sketch of a man in a space suit making a point to two other similarly dressed patrons.Demerest makes his case. Art by Gaughan

This is a very unusual Asimov story. There’s no puzzle, the characters are a little more fleshed out than is typical, and the tone is a lot darker. He pulls it off quite well. It could be tightened up here and there, and Demerest’s real plans are foreshadowed a little too strongly, but all in all, it’s solid, with a maturity that’s often not in evidence in the Good Doctor’s work.

A high three stars.

To Touch a Star, by Robert F. Young

Angry at being rendered impotent as punishment for a crime he didn’t commit, Ben Powers steals the starship Mary and heads for the one place he can reverse his condition. Unfortunately for him, the ship’s computer is intelligent and programmed to combat theft.

black and white illustration of the Mary, a Sputnik-like figure, being exposed to ChiMuZeta (whatever that is). Art uncreditedThe Mary being exposed to ChiMuZeta (whatever that is). Art uncredited

Science fiction editors have long rejected out of hand any story which ends with the characters becoming Adam and Eve. Can we extend that to include any Biblical figure? Just in the last couple of months, we’ve had Jesus, Jonah, and even God. It’s trite. Add in Young’s nonsensical science, and this is an awful story. Only the author’s ability to write halfway decent sentences keeps this from the bottom of the barrel.

A low two stars.

Spaceman, by Lee Harding

Facing a long layover on the planet Hydria, Captain Marnsworth takes the opportunity to find out why his best friend jumped ship there three years earlier. What he finds shocks him to the core.

A squiggly black and white drawing of a surprised mans face.Marnsworth can’t comprehend what he sees. Art uncredited, but obviously Gaughan

The back to nature movement is popular with young people, especially hippies. Star Trek even used it for a plot last year. Concern for how the technological life and separation from nature, especially life in space, will affect humanity is a worthy subject for SF to confront. This really could have been the story to do that; Harding doesn’t take sides, showing value in both approaches. But it’s too long. That or Marnsworth’s general confusion makes the narrative heavy going. Either way, it brings the story down.

Three stars.

Swap, by Ron Goulart

Ron Goulart give us another of his tales of technology gone very wrong. This time, it’s computerized spouse swapping sending the protagonist to the wrong part of town. It’s got that typical Goulart wackiness, but with a darker than usual undertone. If you’re familiar with Ron, you’ve got a pretty good idea whether you’ll like this or not; if you aren’t, this isn’t a bad place to start.

Three stars.

Black and white sketch of a shadowy figure standing over another who is picking themselves up off of the ground.When blind dates go wrong. Art by Gaughan

Ride a Tin Can, by R.A. Lafferty

Two folklorists investigate a race of goblinesque creatures that most people don’t think are intelligent.

A sketch of a goblinesque creature with large ears and eyes, and an open pointed mouthThe Shelni hope to ride a tin can one of these days. Art by Gaughan

For me, the best Lafferty stories are those that actually don’t have much in the way of plot. This one has a bit, but not enough to spoil the essential Lafferty-ness of the whole thing. I could say the same thing here as I did about the Goulart story. I liked it.

Three stars.

Thou Spark of Blood, by Gene Wolfe

One hundred and thirty-five days into the first mission to Mars, the three astronauts aboard are cracking up. They’ve been out of contact with Earth for weeks, and most of the equipment for improving their quality of life has also broken down. When the man in the middle seat is found with his throat cut, tensions run high, with the two survivors accusing each other of murder.

an outlined drawing of a man in a space suit holding up the limp body of another inside of a padded chamber.How do you dispose of a body without a functioning airlock? Art by Gaughan

Gene Wolfe started out writing in a slightly New Wave style, but seems to have fallen into a more traditional form since—he’s not the better for it. I also saw the ending of this one coming. Despite this, I was originally prepared to give the story three stars, but the more I think about it, I can’t. There’s a massive flaw that I can’t really discuss without giving away the ending, but it renders the whole thing completely unbelievable.

Two stars.

Whipping Star (Part 4 of 4), by Frank Herbert

Saboteur Extraordinaire Jorj McKie and the Bureau of Sabotage race to prevent the death of the Caleban Fannie Mae. If she dies, almost every sentient being in the galaxy will die with her.

Two figures in a sketchy style with swirly lines confront eachother in a moment of tension.The final confrontation as the clock runs out. Art by Gaughan

Herbert manages to bring his novel to a fairly satisfying conclusion. There’s enough action and about as much tension as you can expect in a story like this. We also learn the true nature of the Caleban, though it may stretch credibility. If I have a complaint, it’s that Herbert never really engages with the interesting questions he raised in Part 1 about the problems of communicating without common references. It’s still an engaging read, which might read better over the course of a few hours than a few months, though I don’t find myself at all motivated to test that hypothesis.

Three stars for this segment and the novel as a whole.

Reading Room, by Lester del Rey

Lester del Rey turns his attention to two recent Buck Rogers books, one a retrospective on the long-running comic strip, the other a reprint of the original two stories by Philip Francis Nowlan. He uses the occasion to discuss Buck Rogers’ limited connection to SF as it is and its role in furthering the ideas of the Yellow Peril. He even asks if the comic might have played a role in the internment of Japanese Americans during the War by keeping those ideas alive.

A high three stars.

Bordered in bold text Reading Room Lester Del ReySumming up

That’s another issue in the books. No holes in one and maybe a couple of bogeys, but at least the reader never gets conked with an errant shot. The magazine seems to be drifting back into its old routine. The freshness I mentioned earlier that keeps it different from the Pohl era is still there, but it’s starting to get a little stale. Asking for a four or five star story every month is probably too much, but the magazine needs a real highlight every now and then to keep the reader interested. Fingers crossed for next month.




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Book, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[February 14, 1970] Spock must Die!, Starbreed, Seed of the Dreamers, and The Blind Worm

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[For this first Galactoscope of the month, please enjoy this quartet of diverting reviews…which are probably more entertaining than the books in question!]

photo of a man with glasses and curly, long, brown hair, and a beard and mustache
by Gideon Marcus

Spock Must Die!, by James Blish

Star Trek is dead. Long live Star Trek!

No sooner had Trek left the air at the end of last year's rerun season than it reentered the airwaves in syndication. And not just at home, but abroad: the BBC are playing Trek weekly, exposing yet more potential fans to the first real science fiction show on TV.

While new episodes may not be airing on television, new stories are being created. I am subscribed to a number of fanzines devoted to Trek. There aren't quite so many these days as once there were, but there's also been something of a distillation of quality. For instance, I receive Spockanalia and T-Negative with almost montly regularity. These are quality pubs with some real heavy hitters involved. They are crammed with articles and fiction. As to the latter, a lot of it is proposed fourth season scripts turned into stories—by people who really know the show. The stories by such Big Name Fans as Ruth Berman, Dorothy Jones, and Astrid Anderson (of Karen/Poul Anderson lineage) are always excellent.

There have been few commercial Trek books to date. You had Gene Roddenberry/Stephen Whitfield's indispensible reference, The Making of Star Trek, released between the 2nd and 3rd seasons, and Bantam has published three collections of Trek episodes turned into short stories by James Blish (rather sketchily, and not overly faithfully). There was Mack Reynolds' juvenile Mission to Horatius, which wasn't very good.

Cover of an orange novel featuring two converging Spocks. The caption reads A STAR TREK NOVEL SPOCK MUST DIE! BY JAMES BLISH AN EXCITING NEW NOVEL OF ITERPLANETARY ADVENTURE INSPIRED BY THE CHARACTERS OF GENE RODDENBERRY CREATED FOR THE FAMOUS TELEVISION SERIES

Now Bantam has released the first "real" Trek novel, one aimed at adults. It is also by James Blish, who liberally sprinkles footnote references to prior episodes he has novelized. The basic premises are two-fold:

The Enterprise is on a farflung star-charting mission on the backside of the Klingon Empire, which is in a grudging armistice with the Federation enforced by the mind-being Organians (q.v. the excellent episode, Errand of Mercy) . Lieutenant Uhura reports to Captain Kirk that the Klingons have somehow managed to neutralize Organia and launch a surprise attack that knocks the Feds back on their heels.

Chief Engineer "Scotty" bungs together a long-range transporter that will allow Mr. Spock to reconnoiter Organia and report back his findings. However, the journey has an unexpected consequence: the first officer is duplicated—and the replica is irretrievably evil. Can Kirk and his crew resolve the Organia issue before the bad Spock destroys them all?

Put like that, the story seems awfully juvenile, but the slim novel (just 115 pages) is actually quite a good read.

Characterization is weak, relying on the reader's knowledge of the show, but it is rather truer to the cast than prior Trek novelizations. Everyone is a bit more technically savvy and erudite than normal: Star Trek as an Analog hard SF story. Scotty's accent is lovingly, if not quite accurately (to Doohan's variety) transliterated. Uhura and Sulu are given some good "screen time". Spock (both incarnations) are particularly well-rendered. Kirk is a bit of a cipher, and McCoy is more logical than usual. Also, the captain keeps calling him "Doc" rather than "Bones", which is a little jarring (though true to early 1st season Kirk). I did appreciate when Kirk mused, early on, "What was the source of the oddly overt response that women of all ages and degrees of experience seemed to feel toward Spock?" Blish certainly has kept up with the fandom!

As for the plot, well, it's a series of short chapters that read like episode scenes, the novel as a whole divided (informally) into a series of acts. It's a bit overlong for a TV show, but it would make a decent movie. Technical solutions are hatched out of nowhere, implemented, and moved past. One gets the impression that the Enterprise is responsible for half of the Federation's scientific innovations; it's a pity that most are forgotten about after they are developed.

The novel's climax is suitably exciting, and it's quite momentous. The Trek universe is substantially changed as a result…so much so that Blish has probably pinched off his own parallel continuum. Read it, and you'll see why.

I liked it. It's not literature for the ages, but it is at least as good as the best fanfiction (not a slur), and I think it sets a standard going forward.

3.5 stars.

[We were very excited to get this next review from someone who has worked behind the scenes at the Journey for a long time—please welcome Frida Singer to the team!]

photo of a fair-complected woman with long red hair in a plaid dress
by Frida Singer

Starbreed, by MARTHA deMEY CLOW

A book cover depicting an orb of humanoid faces of all colors shapes and sizes. The caption reads MARTHA deMEY CLOW HE WAS A HYBRID- STRONGER, CLEVERER, FASTER, THAN ANY HUMAN- AND FAR MORE DEADLY STARBREED .
cover by Steele Savage

Starbreed begins with a port-side interlude when a frustrated Centaurian merchantman (cross-fertile with other hominids, somehow) exercises his resentment by raping a pubescent prostitute. On discovering the consequent pregnancy, the never-named girl seeks refuge in a local convent. There, nuns present us an America where parentage is a licensed privilege (thanks to the problems postulated by that old dastard Malthus), where the 'defects' of crime mandate sterilisation, and where remote towns have euthanasia clinics.  The Soviet Union and China both remain, but the promise of communism has never truly flowered again, while American capital trips gaily forward, with bigotry her bold escort.  Eighteen years have passed since Centaurian traders first made contact, and thus far they have exploited their contracts, plying a colonial trade monopoly across the seas of space.

The child is raised in the shelter of the convent after his mother dies in childbirth. Thanks to his mixed parentage, by the age of 14 he's already a bizarre demigod of self-sufficiency, and so flees across the border of the American trade zone to Guayaquil.  Taking the alias ‘Roger’ after the slur ‘rojo’ which the border guards used, there he and a cohort of other half-Centaurian teens play at larceny, revolution and revenge. He conceives the idea that, through the time dilation of Centaurians superluminal transport (20 years in a few weeks subjective), he may evade the capital crime of being a child of miscegenation—by being older than would allow for his existence. With stolen money, he invests in a new identity and a working berth on a Centaurian trade vessel, burning to discover the secrets of their design.

Not a soul seems happy, and few afford one another grace. The story reads like something written by Ellison were he smidgen less misanthropic.  Imagine, if you will, Vogt's Slan, but the antagonist is our protagonist.  A Khan of the Eugenics Wars, but molded out of the pain of rejection rather than to the designs of some military-industrial complex.  Books, in the end, are Roger’s only solace, and he bitterly resents his social isolation, fixing on attaining power to secure for himself that which he feels he has been denied.  Women all seem to be playing to scripts which evoke John Norman: prizes to be conquered into obedient adoration, mothers to be outgrown, and artifacts of abjection.  Often it feels as though they’re only set-dressing for the quintet of rational, hale, golden-eyed men who scheme to seize the future as continental hegemons.

This is a bitterly comic, almost Wildean novel where every patronizing impulse seems bound to erupt with the pus of profound condescension, framed within a nesting-doll of layered imperialist exploitation, where the genocide of the Watusi is but a historical footnote. It strives to be a warning klaxon against the simmering of the dispossessed, and fails most profoundly where it relies on racial caricature, or lacks follow-through. I don't expect to re-read it, but I might refer it to others with a taste for maror, willing to subject themselves to stories about eugenics for reasons other than enjoyment.

3 out of 5

photo of a man with short dark hair and goatee
by Brian Collins

With the latest Ace Double (or at least the latest one to fall into my hands), we have two original short novels—although one of them is closer to a novella than a true novel. The shorter (and better) piece is by Emil Petaja, a veteran of the field, who seems to be as productive as ever. The other is (I believe) the second novel by a very young Englishman (he's only 21, so let's take it easy on him) named Brian Stableford. Stableford was apparently sending letters to New Worlds and the dearly missed SF Impulse years ago, when he was a snot-nosed teenager; more recently he's tried his hand at writing professionally.

Ace Double 06707

Double book covers, the first featuring the head of a man and a robot with the caption Emil Petaja Seed of the Dreamers The heroes of the Earth must live again! The second book cover depicts a long sharp green, blue and purple abstract figure with an eye atop, with small humanoids weilding swords below. the caption reads. Brian M. Stableford THE BLIND WORM Complete the Quadrilateral -and the universe is yours
Cover art by Gray Morrow and Jack Gaughan.

Seed of the Dreamers, by Emil Petaja

Brad Mantee is a tough and hard-nosed enforcer for Star Control, an intergalactic empire which Petaja, in his narration, explicitly calls fascist. Brad is here to take one Dr. Milton Lloyd to prison, for the doctor, while undoubtedly brilliant, is also responsible for an experiment gone wrong, killing over a dozen people. The journey goes wrong, however, when, upon landing, Brad meets a beautiful young woman who, unbeknownst to him, is Dr. Lloyd's daughter. Harriet Lloyd, the heroine of the novella, is bright like her old man, but what makes her different is twofold: that she works for TUFF, a league of what seem to be space-hippies, undermining Star Control's tyranny in subtle ways; and two, she has psi powers, these being more or less responsible for the rest of the plot. While Harriet is distracting Brad, Dr. Lloyd hijacks Brad's ship and takes off for what turns out to be a seemingly uninhabited planet, which Harriet christens as Virgo (she's interested in astrology).

The rest of the novella (it really is a lightning-quick hundred pages) is concerned with Brad and Harriet having to cooperate with each other once it becomes apparent Dr. Lloyd has crash-landed on Virgo, and may or may not be dead. This would all be a pretty derivative planetary adventure, and indeed during the opening stretch I was worried that Petaja had not put any effort into this one; but the good news is that Seed of the Dreamers has a neat little trick up its sleeve. It soon dawns on Brad and Harriet that they are not the only people on this planet—the only problem then being that said people have apparently spawned from the old adventure books Brad is fond of reading (secretly and illegally, since Star Control has long since outlawed fiction books). They meet and nearly get killed by some tribal folks out of the pages of King Solomon's Mines by H. Rider Haggard, and really it's off to the races from there.

Seed of the Dreamers reads as a sort of reversal of L. Ron Hubbard's Typewriter in the Sky, since whereas that novel involves a real person getting thrown into a world of fiction, in Petaja's novella the fictitious characters have decided to bring the party to the real world. Virgo is thus strangely populated with characters from different real-world books, including but not limited to King Solomon's Mines, The Time Machine, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, and more. There's even a Tarzan lookalike named Zartan (I assume for legal reasons Petaja cannot use "Tarzan" as a name), who appears in one scene. These characters from books all live by what they call "the Word," which is clearly a joke about the Bible, but it's also in reference to each character's programming, or rather their characterization according to each's source material.

Petaja has a lot of fun with his premise, although Seed of the Dreamers is, if anything, too short. Brad and Harriet coming across one fictitious character after another makes the adventure feel almost like a theme park ride, and most of the supporting cast (excepting Tsung, a Chinese mythological figure) only get a chapter or two before Petaja quickly becomes bored of them, like a bratty child throwing away his toys. It's also mind-numbingly stupid, between the planetary adventure aspect, Brad and Harriet's fast-moving (and thoroughly unconvincing) romance, and Petaja's attempts at explaining scientifically a world that seems more aligned with fantasy. But most of it is good fun.

A hearty three stars.

The Blind Worm, by Brian Stableford

Stableford's novel is much longer than Petaja's, and unfortunately much worse. Indeed, this might be the first time I've reviewed a book for the Journey where I've loathed it simply due to how poorly it's written. The Blind Worm is a far-future science-fantasy action romp, in which humanity has all but died out, with only a tiny number of people living in Ylle, "the City of Sorrow," surrounded by the Wildland, a vast forest front that for humans is almost impossible to traverse. John Tamerlane is known as the black king, being black of both skin and clothing. He seeks to solve the Quadrilateral, a puzzle that seems to connect parallel universes, and which could provide a new beginning for mankind. Unfortunately, the black king and his cohorts must contend with Sum, an alien hive-mind with godlike powers, and a synthetic humanoid cyclops called the Blind Worm. Both the black king and Sum want to solve the Quadrilateral, but only the black king has the "key," in the form of Swallow, one of his aforementioned cohorts.

I would describe this novel, which mercifully clocks in at just under 150 pages, as like a more SFnal take on The Lord of the Rings, but only a fraction of that trilogy in both quantity and quality (I say this already not being terribly fond of Professor Tolkien's magnum opus). There is a big existential battle between good and evil, in a landscape that feels somehow both desolate and overgrown with vegetation; and then there's the Blind Worm, who acts as a third party and a sort of walking plot device. The Blind Worm is the invention of one Jose Dragon (yes, that is his name), a nigh-immortal human who had created the Blind Worm as a way to combat Sum and the Wildland. This is all conveyed in some of the clunkiest and most pseudo-philosophical dialogue I've ever had to read in an SF novel, which does make me wonder if Stableford had intended his characters to talk this way. It doesn't help that he mostly gives these characters, who are generally lacking in life and individual personality, some of the worst-sounding names you can imagine.

Given Stableford's age, I was inclined to grade The Blind Worm on a curve—but it took me four days to get through when it really should have only taken two. The dialogue and attempts at describing action scenes border on the embarrassing. Of the strangely large cast of characters, maybe the most conspicuously lacking is Zea, the single woman of the bunch. Clearly Stableford has certain ideas as to what to do with Zea, as a symbol with arms and legs, but as a character she does and says next to nothing. This is not active woman-hating like one would see in a Harlan Ellison or Robert Silverberg story, but rather it descends from a long literary tradition of contextualizing women as ways for the (presumably male) writer to work in some symbolism, as opposed to giving them Shakespearean humanity. The issues I have with Zea, more specifically with her emptiness as a character, feel like a microcosm for this novel's apparent deficiencies.

The shame of all this is that I would recommend Seed of the Dreamers, albeit tepidly, but it's conjoined to a much longer and much less entertaining piece of work.

One star.

[New to the Journey? Read this for a brief introduction!]


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Book, Conventions/Performances, Magazine/Anthology, Science Fiction/Fantasy, Serial

[February 8, 1970] Boldly going to the Region Between (March 1970 Galaxy)

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[New to the Journey?  Read this for a brief introduction!]

photo of a man with glasses and curly, long, brown hair, and a beard and mustache
by Gideon Marcus

A pleasant Escapade

Little fan conventions are popping up all over the place, perhaps thanks to the popularity of Star Trek.  The first adult science fiction show on the small screen, Trek not only thrilled existing fans (who have been putting on conclaves since the '30s), but has also galvanized millions of newfen who previously had lived outside the mainstream of fandom.

Last weekend, I went to a gathering of Los Angeles fans called "Escapade".  It differs from most fan conventions in that it focuses almost exclusively on science fiction and fantasy on the screen rather than in print.  Moreover, the emphasis is not on the SFnality of the works, but on the relationships and interactions of the characters.  This is the in-person culmination of the phenomenon we've seen in the Trekzines, where the stories and essays are about Spock or Kirk or Scotty—the people, not so much the adventures they go on.

Another distinction is that most of the attendees were women.  Most SF conventions, while not stag parties, are male-dominated.  The main difference I noted was that panels were less formal, more collaborative.  Instead of folks sitting behind a table and gabbing with each other, they were more like discussion groups…fannish teach-ins, if you will.  I really dug it.

If Escapade represents the future of fandom, then beam me up.  I'm sold!

And since the photos are back from the Fotomat, here's a sample of what I snapped:

Photo of a bearded man in glasses and a paisley shirt holding up a copy of a fanzine next to a tall woman in a Trek gold tunic flashing the Vulcan salute
That's David, holding up the latest issue of The Tricorder (#4) and Melody dressed as a Starfleet lieutenant

Photo of a dark-haired woman in a blue Star Trek uniform, smiling at the camera. She is carrying books in one arm, and behind her are tables of fannish items for sale.
And here's Melody again in sciences blue—who says you can't make a Vulcan smile?

A picture of a smiling brunette woman in a ribbed white sweater, sitting on the floor with an equally smiling baby about one year old.
If you can't recruit a fan…make one!  (this one isn't Lorelei's…but it's probably giving her ideas)

An image projected onto a wall, showing an image from the Star Trek episode 'The Enemy Within', where Kirk is drinking, faced by a Security woman in a beehive hairdo.
Lincoln Enterprises had a stall in the Huckster Hall—I got this clip from The Enemy Within!

The New Thing in America

It's been eight years since folks like Ballard and Aldiss started the New Wave in the UK.  It's leaked out across the Pond for a while, but this is the first time an issue of a Yank mag has so embraced the revolutionary ethos.  The latest issue of Galaxy was a surprise and delight that filled my spare moments (not many!) at the aforementioned convention.  Let's take a look.

Cover of Galaxy magazine featuring a ghostly male figure half-submerged in a multi-hued representation of the universe, dozens of planets swirling near him
cover by Jack Gaughan

The Galaxy Bookshelf, by Algis Budrys

A black-and-white ink image of the article's title in a bubble, surrounded by stars
illustration by Jack Gaughan

Budrys' focus is on fandom this month.  He notes that SF fandom differs from all others (that of James Bond, Sherlock Holmes, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Conan, etc.) in that we are omnivorous.  We contain multitudes, digging all of the above and much, much more.

We also are directly responsible for the plaudits of our passion—whereas the Oscars, Edgars, and Silver Spurs (and Nebulas, for that matter) are given out by organizations, the Hugos are awarded by the fans themselves (well, those that have the $2-3 to shell out for a World Science Fiction Society membership).  Which means that all the nominations that Galactic Journey (hasn't) got are really worth something!

After a lengthy and entertaining discussion of what fandom means to Budrys, he goes on to review the indispensable The Index of Science Fiction Magazines 1951-1965, compiled by Norman Metcalf.  It's not only a useful reference, but it's fun to read what all your favorite authors have produced, and also to see the commonalities and differences of stories that end up next to each other when ordered alphabetically.

He also recommends Adventures in Discovery, an anthology of science fact articles by science fictioneers (including reliables like Asimov, Ley, and de Camp, but also unusuals like Silverberg and Poul Anderson).  It's put together by my dear friend, Tom Purdom, and you can bet we'll be reviewing it soon, too.

Now on to the fiction!

The Region Between, by Harlan Ellison

A three-panel image, showing a burst of white, raylike lines against a black background. The title is also in white letters, with the smaller legend 'Death came merely as a hyphen. For it was only when Bailey died that he began to live'. The third panel is black ink on a white background, showing a man in a circle, surrounded by astrological lines and symbols. The circle and man are upside down, set on top of framing black lines, emphasizing chaotic disruption.
illustration by Jack Gaughan

In Ellison's story, the universe is filled with warring factions: beings, societies, and races that play God with the lesser forces in an endless struggle for dominance.  The other truth of Region: the soul is immortal, and death merely a transition.  Your essence is also poachable, in death and in life—and a whole gaggle of Thieves has sprung up to take advantage of this.  When the soul that is snatched from a still-living being is too valuable to one of the squabbling tin pot deities, that's when it calls in the Succubus.  The Succubus deals in souls, too, thwarting the Thieves by replacing snitched spirits with ones from his collection.

One such is William Bailey, late of Earth, so tired of the pointlessness of it all that he picks euthanasia over enduring, but possessed of such anger at his lousy universe that he proves a true son-of-a-bitch.  A real Excedrin headache.  A turis.  A pain in the ass.  (Sound like any diminutive titans we know?)

Every body he inhabits, every pawn in every war, game, conquest, he subverts.  Through logic and sheer force of will, he convinces the shell personality of his host to allow him control, enough to stick it to the Man who pulls the strings of His minions.  And after each successful wrenching of the gears, the Succubus, too busy to note the peccadilloes of a single errant soul, tosses him off to his next assignment to wreak havoc.

It's the ultimate implementation of hubris and nemesis, an eye-stick against solipsism.  Not only are you not God, but watch out: your dicking around with creation may be just the thing that causes your uncreation.

The New Wave has all kinds of literary and typographical tricks—if you read New Worlds, you've seen them all.  This is the first time I've really seen them used fully in service of the story rather than being fripperous illumination.  They are special effects for the printed page, as impressive as any Kubrick rendered in his 2001 for the cinema.  I wouldn't want all of my stories to look like this, and Ghod help us if Ellison inspires a new New Wave of copycats who absorb the style and not the subtance.

But, my goodness, five stars.

The Propheteer, by Leo P. Kelley

A black-and-white sketch, briefly rendered, of a twisted robot sitting in a futuristic hammock, facing a wall of screens. The legend reads 'The Propheteer's people smiled for their lives -- or lost them!'
illustration by Jack Gaughan

"We can predict crime with absolute precision.  We can tell who will commit a crime and when.  We can even predict the exact nature of the crime."

Sounds like Dick's story, The Minority Report, though in Kelley's piece, what keeps crime from happening isn't a trio of precogs, but one man who monitors and controls the chemical balance of every human on Earth, ensuring tranquility and crimelessness throughout the planet.

Except, that man twiddles meaningless knobs and dummy switches.  Another man is in control of humanity, and he wields a stick, not an endocrine carrot…

It's a little too histrionic and pat, and less effective than the stories which preceded it (including an Analog story from 1962 by R. C. Fitzpatrick)

Two stars.

A Place of Strange, by George C. Willick

A pencil drawing of a knapped stone item, looking both like a knife and a deity. Above it reads the legend 'What would you call a place where men planned war?'

Humans teach primitive beings to hate, to fight.  The moral, like something from a less than effective Star Trek episode is stated: "There must be a way for simple survival to change into civilization without war.  There must be."

Indeed, there must be.

Two stars.

Downward to the Earth (Part 4 of 4), by Robert Silverberg

A pencil illustration showing the alien elephants, called the Nildoror, spattered in black goo.
illustration by Jack Gaughan

Silverbob wraps up his latest serial, detailing the end of Gunderson's quest toward redemption on the colony he once administrated.  Of course, it ends with the unveiling of the mystery of Rebirth, which is revealed in the dreamy, avant-garde style that typifies the rest of the story.  We also learn the relationship between the two sapient races of Belzegor, the elephantine Nildoror and the apelike Sulidor.  It is both fascinating and also a little disappointing.  Without giving anything away, I suppose I was most interested in the concept of a world with two intelligent species sharing a planet; in Silverberg's story, it turns out they are less a pair of distinct beings and more two sides of the same coin.

There is a fascinating, hopeful note to the conclusion that elevates the story above a personal salvation story, even if the whole thing is more an exercise in building a setting than presenting an actual narrative.

I'd say four stars for this installment, three-and-a-half for the whole.  It may get consideration for the Hugo, but the year is young, and I imagine there is better to come—probably from Silverberg, himself.

Sunpot (Part 2 of 4), by Vaughn Bodé

A cartoon panel, primarily showing a spaceship in orbit. The caption reads, 'The giant Sunpot complex hangs high above the Russian side of the Moon...it hangs like a bloated Siamese bowling pin in the afternoon motionlessness of space...'. The lettering, kerning, and bolding are all disastrous.
illustration by Vaughn Bodé

The adventures of the Sunpot continue, as does the illegible lettering.  I was dismayed to see Belind Bump, who had appeared to be an intrepid heroine, reduced to a host for boobies.  Fake boobies at that (as we are reminded multiple times throughout the strip).

A waste of space.  One star.

Reflections, by Robert F. Young

Last up is this sentimental tale of two humans of the far future teleporting to Earth for a tour of the cradle of their race.  Evolved far beyond our ability to ken, they are incorporeal beings of nostalgia and love.

Pleasant, but eminently forgettable.  It's that style (the type is interestingly arranged in reflecting columns and meandering rivers) over substance thing I just worried about above.

Three stars.

Summing up

That's that for this experiment in printing.  There were unfortunate casualties: the Silverberg was printed with compressed carriage returns between lines, which made it harder to read.  Also, with all the illustrations and text tricks (not to mention the comic), we probably got about 80% of the usual content—the Silverberg compression notwithstanding.

The stuff that isn't the Ellison or the Silverberg (or the Budrys) is also pretty disposable.  That said, the Ellison and the Silverberg comprise 80% of the issue, so who's complaining?

I definitely won't quit now… unlike Tony Curtis.

An advertisement showing a man in a doctor's uniform. The ad copy says, 'I got sick and tired of coughing and wheezing and hacking. So I quit. I quit smoking cigarettes. Which wasn't easy. I'd been a pack-a-day man for about 8 years. Still, I quit. And, after a while, I also quit coughing and wheezing and hacking. Now, the American Cancer Society offers every quitter an I.Q. button. To tell everyone you've got what it takes to say not quitting.' In smaller letters, there is an additional message: 'Get your I.Q. button from your local Unit of the American Cancer Society.'"/>
This campaign is everywhere—commercials, Laugh-In, the back inside cover of Galaxy…

[New to the Journey?  Read this for a brief introduction!]


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Fashion, music, politics, sports, Magazine/Anthology, Science Fiction/Fantasy, Serial

[February 2, 1970] Deceptive Appearances (March 1970 IF)

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by David Levinson

The Super Fight

Back in 1967, a radio producer by the name of Murray Woroner came up with the idea of using a computer to work out who the best heavyweight fighter of all time is. He polled 250 boxing writers and came up with a list of 16. He then worked closely with a programmer to input everything that could be determined about each boxer into a computer.

Match-ups were set up as a single-elimination tournament to be broadcast as a series of radio plays. Each fight was run through an NCR 315 computer the night before broadcast to create a blow-by-blow account of the fight. Woroner and boxing announcer Guy LeBow would then “call” the fight as if it were really happening. In the end, Rocky Marciano beat Jack Dempsey and was awarded a championship belt worth $10,000.

The arbiter, an NCR 315.The arbiter, an NCR 315.

Ali was not happy. The computer had him losing in the quarter finals to Jim Jeffries, a boxer he has little respect for. He sued for defamation of character, asking for $1 million. They settled when Ali agreed to take part in a filmed version of a computerized fight between him and Marciano in return for $10,000 and a cut of the box office.

Last year, Ali and Marciano got together and sparred for over 70 rounds, filming a few different versions of events that the computer might predict. Marciano dropped 50 pounds and wore a toupee so he’d look more like he did in his prime. Ali probably had to get back in shape too, since he’s been banned from boxing for refusing induction into the army. Instinct seems to have taken over for both men. Ali bloodied Marciano’s nose and opened cuts over his eyes (Rocky always bled easily); at one point, Ali was so exhausted he refused to go back into the ring (until he got another $2,000) and could barely raise his arms enough to eat breakfast the next day. Filming ended just three weeks before Marciano was killed in a plane crash last Labor Day.

Armed with hours of footage and the top secret computer result, Woroner and his team put together a film they dubbed The Super Fight. On January 20th, it aired in 1,500 theaters in the US, Canada, and Europe via closed-circuit television, with viewers paying a whopping $5.00 a head.

How did it turn out? Ali is not happy. The computer had him knocked out in the 13th round. He’s talking about another defamation suit. Maybe he’ll change his mind when he finds out that was only in the US and Canada. European viewers saw Ali win by TKO. The producers are also talking about destroying all the prints.

Boxing Poster captioned AT THIS THEATRE JANUARY 20, 1970 - 10 PM-E.S.T. THE SUPER FIGHT ONE SHOWING ONLY THE ONLY 2 UNDEFEATED HEAVYWEIGHT CHAMPIONS IN HISTORY ROCKY MARCIANO VS MUHAMMAD ALI (CASSIUS CLAY) ON FILM LIVE! IN COLOR TICKETS ON SALE NOW!Movie poster for the event. That “LIVE!” is a little deceptive, which is something else Ali is complaining about.

It’s a rather science-fictional concept we’ve seen in other guises. Maybe Murray Woroner got his original idea from the Star Trek episode “A Taste of Armageddon.” Of course, any statistician will tell you that a single simulation doesn’t really say anything. Rolling a die once doesn’t tell you if it’s fair; it takes hundreds or thousands of repetitions to determine that. But when the computer needs 45 minutes to determine the events of one match, this is the best that can be expected. For now.

Not what it looks like

Authors like to counter readers’ expectations. It’s a good way to evoke a response, particularly in a genre that has a fair number of cliches and formulas. Sometimes, the surprise comes from the author doing something that’s not what you expect that particular writer to do or say. This month’s IF offers some of both.

Cover of the March 1970 issue of IF science fiction, depicting an astronaut carrying an antenna on the surface of the moon, looking out onto the Earth and its magnetic field depicted in white, orange, red and blue.Art actually for “SOS,” rather than just suggested by. Maybe because it’s by Mike Gilbert, not the overworked Jack Gaughan.

SOS, by Poul Anderson

Some 2,000 years from now, the Earth’s magnetic field is fading, prior to a reversal of the magnetic poles. The feudalistic Westrealm and the communist Autarchy of Great Asia compete for dwindling resources as they search desperately for a way to survive the pending catastrophe. The Autarchy secretly invades a Westrealm research station on the dark side of the moon, preparatory to a surprise attack on the West’s space fleet. It’s up to the scientists to find a way to prevent it.

Black and white illustration depicting two astronauts on the surface on the moon, one is running and the other stands with his arm up. Behind them stands a large white structure while ships launch in the distance. The caption reads SOS. Poul Anderson. Earth flipped- but Man stayed right on his course!The invasion arrives. Art uncredited

This feels like a fairly typical Anderson story of the well-done sort all the way through. But then he hits the reader with a punch to the gut right at the end. The ending and the commentary from the author are surprising in light of most of his work. It’s a good story, but weakened by two things: the title completely gives away the resolution; worse, there’s a couple of paragraphs at the beginning that undercut the emotional impact of the ending.

A high three stars, but could have been better.

Telemart 3, by Bob Shaw

Shaw gives us the tale of an unpleasant man who married for money and his wife who seems intent on spending all of it. The problem is made worse by the titular device, which allows her to buy things from the comfort of her living room with instant delivery. It’s probably meant as commentary on consumerism, but feels more like a sexist rant about women and money.

Two stars.

Sketchy illustration of a man throwing what appears to be a lamp.Matters come to a head. Art by Gaughan

The Thing in the Stone, by Clifford Simak

After a car accident that killed his wife and child and may have given him brain damage, Wallace Daniels retired to the countryside of south-western Wisconsin, where he has visions that seem to let him go walking in the geologic past. There’s also something alive buried deep in the limestone, not to mention an unpleasant and shiftless neighbor. Not everything is as it seems.

Illustration of the silhouette of a man walking along the ocean shore.Daniels finds himself in the deep past, before life has truly left the ocean. Art by Gaughan

This story has almost everything I don’t like about Simak: the pastoralism, wandering back and forth over the line between science fiction and fantasy, the slow progression. I understand why people like him, but he just isn’t for me. If you like those aspects of his work, you may like this one a lot.

Three stars for me, might be four for Simak fans.

The Ethics of Trade, by Timothy M. Brown

This month’s (official) new author gives us a series of letters from the operators of a company that provides dangerous animals to zoos to one of their clients. There’s nothing really new here, but it’s done fairly well. Brown does a good job of calling the letter writer into question, even though we only hear his side.

Three stars.

Cover depicting a scaly claw dragging a black tear down the center of the page. The caption reads: THE ETHICS OF TRADE TIMOTHY M. BROWN an IF firstRigellian wombats are very, very dangerous. Art by Gaughan

In the Silent World, by Ed Bryant

Julie is a co-ed with telepathy. As far as she know, she’s the only telepath in the world. At least, until an overwhelming cry of loneliness prompts another to contact her.

Sketch of a mouthless woman with long blonde hair.Julie, I suppose. Art uncredited, but looks like Gaughan

Nothing about this story is bad, but nothing is particularly outstanding either. I saw the ending coming almost as soon as the other telepath made contact. There’s not much more to say about it.

Three stars.

Traps, by Jack Dann and George Zebrowski

Planet 3-10004-2 can’t be approved for colonization until all land animals have been properly classified; Rysling has taken the contract to capture the last unclassified species. He’s puzzled by the presence of another ship and the cryptic messages left by its pilot. Even more puzzling is the effect the creature he’s after seems to have on him.

Illustration of a man looking on the ground in despair.Rysling’s not sure who or what he is. Art by Gaughan

Dann seems to be a new author, but Zebrowski had a story in a collection that came out last month, so this isn’t quite an IF first. The premise and the powers of the creature are hard to buy, but it’s told well enough. There’s enough talent here to make the story readable; we’ll see if either author has any staying power.

Three stars.

Whipping Star (Part 3 of 4), by Frank Herbert

Herbert’s tale of Saboteur Extraordinary Jorj McKie and his efforts to stop a “reformed” sadist from causing the death of an alien, thus triggering the deaths of nearly every sentient being in the galaxy, plods along. Last month, I said the story was holding my interest and praised the action. Neither of those things is true this month. This installment is nothing but conversations. There are a couple of brief bits of action, but neither is more than a flash.

I’m also getting a little bored. There may not be enough here for a novel. The idea of examining communication without a common perspective is sound, but the whole thing might have been trimmed to a longish novella.

Three fading stars.

The bad guys make an ineffectual attempt to eliminate McKie. Art by GaughanThe bad guys make an ineffectual attempt to eliminate McKie. Art by Gaughan

The Time Judge, by Dannie Plachta

A criminal is dragged through time and condemned by the title character to a fitting punishment.

Art nouveau cover depicting a judge pointing downward to the author and title DANNIE PLACHTA THE TIME JUDGE The accused found no end to his crime- no beginning to justice!Here come da judge. Art by Gaughan

Actually, we don’t know if the punishment is fitting, since we’re never told the nature of the crime, just of the judge’s disgust. For that matter, the punishment wasn’t all that uncommon in its day. As with nearly every Plachta story, the nicest thing I can say is that it’s very short.

Two stars.

Love Thy Neighbor, by E. Clayton McCarty

Jake Terrell starts seeing something out of the corner of his eye. Then it jumps into his head, and he begins behaving oddly.

Cover depicting 5 sets of sketchily drawn sets of eyes going down the page. Some look at figures in the margin. The bottom set is punctuated with tiny stick figures with heads as pupils. The caption reads LOVE THY NEIGHBOR E. CLAYTON McCARTY The loving aliens came- and there went the neighborhood! It’s a stretch, but I see how this connects with the story. Art uncredited

Another story that’s like a piece of popcorn. You consume it without really noticing it, nor is there anything memorable about it, good or bad. A decently told piece of filler.

Three low, but not too low stars.

All Brothers Are Men, by Basil Wells

Three alien religious fanatics are part of a conspiracy to drive humans off their world. Two of them started out as the personality of the third implanted into mind-wiped bodies. The years apart have undermined their commonality, and two of them may no longer believe in the cause.

Illustration of a fluffy, large eyed, dish eared alien with a beak, holding a paper airplane.Not sure what the paper airplane is doing here. Art by Gaughan

Perhaps the most interesting thing about this story is that the humans aren’t really in it. They’re a distant, never seen presence affecting the characters’ society in ways they don’t like. For a guy who started out 30 years ago and probably spends more time writing mysteries and westerns than SF, Wells has managed to stay up-to-date. This is by no means a New Wave tale, but it still manages to have a modern sensibility.

A very solid three stars.

Miscellany

Elsewhere in the magazine, the letters were almost universally in praise of the savaging Ejler Jakobsson gave John Campbell in two editorials over the latter’s piece on race and IQ. I particularly liked the point made by one writer, who notes that Campbell’s premise is based tightly on statistical analysis of something poorly defined and understood, while he flatly rejects statistical evidence indicating clear connections between smoking and lung cancer and heart disease.

Summing up

Looking over what I’ve written, this seems like a weak issue, but it’s not as bad as I make it sound. The Simak is undoubtedly the best in the issue; it might even be a four-star story, but my own prejudices keep me from rating it that high. The Anderson and Wells are fine stories, if not outstanding. The rest are mostly just there. The only really bad story is the Shaw (Plachta’s not bad, just stupid). Frank Herbert might manage to salvage his novel in the final episode, but I’m not holding my breath.




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